


mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel (we got the gift of melody)

by mooosicaldreamz



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Pop Star AU, ridiculous honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 13:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 64,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8058340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooosicaldreamz/pseuds/mooosicaldreamz
Summary: Beca is an up and coming producer, Chloe Beale is pop’s newest princess. This is the story of how they fall in love.
"Beca Mitchell, producer of just-barely-notable-but-growing-in-notoriety songs like “Lightning Street” by Albion Avalon and “Esorcus” by Palindromes, is a bit of a mystery player. When you Google her name, you’ll see her production credits on Snoop Dogg’s Christmas CD, and a few other major artists from her time with Residual Heat. You’ll see a few grainy clips of her DJing at some of the hottest L.A. clubs, showing off a flare for that perfect fade from one song to another over a thumping and heavy bass. You’ll even find a few of those mixes perfected into glorious mash-ups that hipsters the world over crave."
"The Billboard Hot 100 chart’s record for most number-one singles from one album to appear is five, shared by Katy Perry and Michael Jackson. The song playing on the radio as Chloe Beale sits down for an interview in Chicago, just before she blows the doors off the at-capacity United Center, is Beale’s fourth from her second album, Cotillion."





	1. Stars Will Stop Where they Are

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my long national nightmare. The title is from "Music" by Madonna and "Pop" by *NSYNC, because I was raised in a time and a place. Thank you to lynnearlington, who has read this fic for about two years and finally convinced me to finish it because she wants a different fic far more. You are the best baeta.
> 
> [Here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKMZ4BWn4WjAMQnTTGZw-ZUwWBLzq9lIe) is the playlist for this fic. I promise it will enhance your listening experience.

**BECA MITCHELL IS ON DECK**  
by Max Greenfield

Beca Mitchell, producer of just-barely-notable-but-growing-in-notoriety songs like “Lightning Street” by Albion Avalon and “Esorcus” by Palindromes, is a bit of a mystery player. When you Google her name, you’ll see her production credits on Snoop Dogg’s Christmas CD, and a few other major artists from her time with Residual Heat. You’ll see a few grainy clips of her DJing at some of the hottest L.A. clubs, showing off a flare for that perfect fade from one song to another over a thumping and heavy bass. You’ll even find a few of those mixes perfected into glorious mash-ups that hipsters the world over crave.

She’s a jack-of-all-trades type with musical interests that seem to roam over much of the landscape. She counts Jesse Swanson, a film composer; Benji Applebaum, a Broadway actor; Cynthia-Rose Adams, owner of the wildly popular Aquatic, 52 Stack, and Jabberjaw, two clubs and one concert hall, respectively; and Emily Junk, a singer-songwriter with considerable buzz of her own as her closest friends.

In fact, Swanson and Junk have shown up with Mitchell on the occasion of our interview, claiming that Mitchell had owed them a lunch. Mitchell isn’t known for being especially effusive with the press or much anyone; Alan Dearborn and Jenny Bierdock, of the band Fjords, have claimed that Mitchell is, “a genius, but a bit of an oddball.”

As is customary for most of my interviews, the first question I ask is, “What song is your favorite right now?” Before Mitchell can even open her mouth to answer, however, Swanson and Junk are crowding her and shouting, “I’m on parade!”

It’s true that Mitchell has, for the month of June, been the DJ in residence for every Friday night at Aquatiq, which finds its home in the heart of West Hollywood, and that “Parade” is usually a piece of the biggest song of the night. But, for someone who spends time producing indie electronic music, the monster pop song of the summer seems an odd choice.

“Hey, it’s a good song,” she says, not bothering to defend herself. “I think the production level on that album is insane.”

Calvin Harris, Max Martin, and Taylor Swift, who share much of the production credits on the album in question – Cotillion, by Chloe Beale, if you were living under a rock – are all major artists and producers. When asked if those are the kind of footsteps Mitchell wants to follow in, she hedges.

“I kind of want to find my own place,” she says. She already has, in some ways. The myriad of productions you’ll find her name on and the friends she carries with her speak to the unique-ness of Mitchell and her work.

One thing is for certain: as unpredictable as Mitchell might be, we should keep paying attention. FADER.

-

**SHE DIDN’T START THE FIRE**  
by Trevor Callum, photos by Serena Quentin

The Billboard Hot 100 chart’s record for most number-one singles from one album to appear is five, shared by Katy Perry and Michael Jackson. The song playing on the radio as Chloe Beale and I sit down for our interview in Chicago, just before she blows the doors off the at-capacity United Center, is Beale’s fourth from her second album, Cotillion.

The song is the oft-predictable slow song of the singles – the one the studio releases just to prove they’ve got a hitmaker who can access deeper feelings beyond bubblegum. Its name is “Clay,” but it isn’t about a boy named as such. It’s about, maybe amusingly, being sculpted out of the infamous substitute for dirt that spreads out across the southeastern states of the Carolinas and Georgia.

It’s a sad song, about feeling parts of yourself get chipped away. Chipped away by what, or who, is up to the discretion of the listener, as is often the case with Beale’s songs.

Much of the album has co-writing credits from Taylor Swift, a collaboration fostered by Swift’s ex, Calvin Harris, who has production credit for just about the whole album in some way or another. Swift’s approach on 30 hasn’t lessened her pop songwriting, and Chloe Beale has benefitted enormously from the interest paid to her by two of the most imminent artists in pop music today.

“When Calvin offered to work with me, I was kind of floored,” Beale says, asked to describe the journey to this album, to this stadium. “I had signed with Columbia, and had released my first album, and it had been okay. But all of a sudden, as I was starting the next one, Calvin Harris and Taylor Swift and Lorde and Ryan Tedder were right there. I lucked out.”

But Chloe’s name is also on every single track, next to songwriter, whether it’s sharing a line with another name or not. The first single, “Parade,” was a dance-y neon extravaganza, Harris’ signature all over it, and it has a shiny Record of the Year Grammy nomination for his work. The second, a mid-tempo with a bumpy bass, was “Onto the Next One.” It bore the marks of Ryan Tedder’s gifted production, mixing with the darker Lorde’s. The third was a strummy, bubbly love song: “Your Turn.” It was a classic turn back to a 20 year-old Swift, and earned a Song of the Year nomination, for both Swift and Beale.

But “Clay” is a harder animal to describe. The songwriting credit is Beale’s, and the production is solely Swift’s. It sounds like it was recorded in the middle of a dark room, in secret. It’s soft and there aren’t a lot of extra trappings – just a hypnotic sounding echo hovering around strings and electric chords.

“I wanted to make sure that I showed a range on this album,” Beale says. “I like dancing and singing fun songs, and I like sad songs and I like Broadway musicals. I mean, my sweet spot is the dance ones, for sure. And I want that to be a part of my career. I don’t mind being called bubblegum, you know? But I’m also something more than that too.”

Beale, whose home base is Los Angeles, when she’s not on a sell-out national tour, seems like the kind of artist who might be able to cover that range. Even when “Clay” seems a dark turn, it rumbles with a strong beat, ripe for remixing into another dance hall hit. That’s probably why it’s climbed straight to the top of the charts. Or maybe it’s Beale herself, whose charisma is stronger than any other pop star in recent memory.

At a concert a few days ago, Beale had halted a huge dance number just to pull a group of girls on stage, redirecting her band and dancers to break from the comfortable routine of a planned tour. One of them had been crying, and Beale had been worried.

At a Columbia Records press event in the fall, just after “Parade” had taken over every club in every major city in the country, she had defended the music video – a sexy romper that didn’t fall too far out of line with the expected one from a female pop artist – to a reporter who had deemed it inappropriate and a tribute before the male gaze.

“The song is about being confident of yourself, and about parading around for yourself and for your confidence. I’m pretty confident about all this,” she had said, gesturing down at the minidress that sculpted well to her body. “And I want other women to feel like they can parade too. Who cares about whatever a dude thinks?”

Beale had taken that narrative a step further by not showing herself at all in the video for “Onto the Next One,” and letting a friend of hers star instead as a woman working her way through both men and women on a night out on the town. Fat Amy, as the Australian actor/singer/comedienne is known professionally, was a reflection of Beale’s own oddities.

“I don’t know if she understands what personal space is,” Swift says, though she says it with a grin in a clip from an interview with Ellen. “She once greeted me by kissing me full on the lips.”

That had started off a frenzied round of Sapphic rumors, new to Beale and probably old hat to Swift, whose dating history, both supposed and true, has been public fodder for years. While Taylor didn’t bother confirming or denying any of the rumors, Beale had happily appeared the next day on Ellen with plenty to say.

“I’m not dating Taylor Swift, and I promise if I was, it wouldn’t be a secret. I’m not really interested in hiding parts of myself. I’m a bisexual and I love dogs way more than cats, if you wanted some facts.”

Ellen’s face is at once thrilled and amazed. The clip’s been watched almost twelve million times since its posting four months ago. With the label of an LGBT icon now slung around Beale’s neck, “Your Turn” charged into June and Pride Month with fervor.

And now, it’s August. Beale is truly an open book, an easy interview. She expounds on everything from her love for Wham! to what kind of couch she just got for her new Malibu home. She talks about her family, who she posts Instagram photos of consistently once a week. She talks about her love for the Atlanta Braves, and how she wishes they’d change their mascot, Chief Wahoo.

“I’m pretty excited to be out here,” Beale says. “I love being on tour, making people smile. I wish I could meet every person who came to my shows, like I used to when I was just trying to get on a label, to get someone to hear a demo, and thank them.”

I tell her that this probably won’t ever be possible again. Beale is already a Grammy nominated artist, whose album is competing with the reigning winner, Bumper Allen for the coveted Album of the Year. Though the crowd of artists whose albums have have placed four singles isn’t quite so illustrious as the classic Bad or the sparkling testament to pop that is Teenage Dream, they aren’t slumps. Chloe Beale now shares space on a records list with Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Usher, Paula Abdul, and George Michael.

“I do really love Wham!,” is what Beale comes out with when she hears the list read back to her. This love is proof enough of my point: even George Michael, surely the lowest denominator on the list, still draws the love of millions.

The passing moment of sadness at not being able to individually greet the thousands upon thousands of fans who crowd into arenas around the country to hear Chloe Beale sing drifts away from the woman easily enough when the song changes from “Clay” to a more upbeat, electronic melody in the now Grammy-nominated alternative song “Gorge” by Fjords.

“I love this song!” Beale exclaims, jumping up from the table where we’ve been sitting. She starts dancing around the room, pulling dancers, managers, crew, and yes, even this reporter, into a small party that develops around her.

When Katy Perry pulled even with Michael Jackson on the records list, many thought it an uneven battle, thanks to the relative ease of buying a single in the digital age compared to the 80s. But after watching Chloe Beale take over a room simply through love of a song, it’s easy to see that the record might not be solely theirs for much longer, and that many other records are about to be broken.

-

“Who put this on my desk ten minutes before I’m about to leave?” Beca asks, pushing her head out of her office so she can stare accusingly at her bullpen. They all giggle amongst themselves, as she holds the magazine, complete with Chloe Beale’s giggling visage, up in the air. No one owns up to it, of course.

“Beca,” Samantha says, extremely nervously. Beca glares down at her for half a second before she remembers that Emily had told her to be nicer to her receptionist.

“Yes?” she says, pulling the magazine out of the air and glaring around the room at the losers she has somehow allowed into her office to help her find and produce music. Sam seems to be scrambling for a way to express herself.

“Mr. Swanson brought that by when you were in your meeting,” Sam says, and she even half-smiles, because there isn’t a girl on this earth who can’t be charmed by Jesse fucking Swanson.

“Of course he did,” Beca sighs, grabbing for her messenger bag from the floor (she had dropped it in her rage). “I’m leaving now. Go home at a reasonable hour, all of you. It’s Friday. Do whatever you do.”

And then she’s out the door, nodding at the 4AD receptionist in the general office and very subtly pushing the door close button on the elevator more than normal to assure a ride down to the garage in solitude. The magazine’s way too suggestive cover, featuring Chloe in a crop top and short shorts with a bikini top visible beneath the shirt is distracting.

She gets half a glance into the actual article, which has even more photos, before she remembers that she’s pissed that Jesse fucking Swanson showed up at her office while he knew she was in a meeting just to annoy her with a magazine featuring an article about her celebrity crush. What a jerk.

She barely gets into her car before she’s getting a phone call.

“Have you left work yet?” Jessica asks, always no-nonsense when it comes to Beca’s professional life. Which is good for Beca, considering the girl is her agent person. Kind of.

“Have you ever thought about chilling out?” Beca asks, buckling her seatbelt and waving to the dude at the valet booth as she pulls out onto the streets of Los Angeles. Jessica’s sigh is audible over the phone.

“I’m just making sure,” Jessica says. “Last Friday you left work too late and I had to buy you Taco Bell at four in the morning.”

“Next time I get sued, I will make sure you get paid a little extra,” Beca says. “Are you coming tonight?”

“Only if you play my favorite song,” Jessica says back, and Beca laughs, pulling onto the freeway and heading straight to her apartment so she can get ready.

“I will one hundred percent play “Pony,” just for you,” Beca says, and Jessica laughs.

“Then I will be there. But I’m not buying you Taco Bell, so eat something before you get to the club, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Beca says, and Jessica hangs up without saying goodbye, which is one of her favorite things to do with Beca. Beca had given up being annoyed about it somewhere during her senior year at college.

Six hours later, she’s eaten something (it was Taco Bell, but Jessica doesn’t need to know), and she’s just plugged her laptop into the DJ booth at Aquatiq when Cynthia-Rose saunters in and claps her on the back.

“You ready to rock, DJ B?” she asks, and there’s really no answer to that other than hell yes when the club owner is asking you that. Beca learned that in college too, somewhere in Brooklyn at some tiny, shitty club.

“Oh yeah,” Beca says, winking at Cynthia-Rose, who winks back with plenty of flirt. “Any requests?”

“I heard “Pony” was on tap tonight,” the other girl says, laughing. “What more could I ask for?”

“Fair enough,” Beca says. She plugs in her headphones and starts pulling her set together.

Ten minutes later, after the announcer has finished convincing the crowd to scream for her, she presses play.

“I’m just a bachelor, looking for a partner…”

And they scream.

-

Beca is in the bathroom at the Grammys. It’s kind of a weird mix of emotions, because, for one, she really has to pee and the line has been torturous. On the other hand, she was at the Grammys, an institution and award she had hoped to win since she was like four. While it was really groups she had produced who were nominated, she still had her name next to theirs. If they won, she got a little trophy to shove up on her wall, next to the one for Snoop’s Christmas album.

She had apparently chosen to join the line at the tail end of a commercial rush – she didn’t really know, because she, Jesse, and Emily were doing shots (Emily, who had to do like, a photocall later, was not doing as many) in celebration of the ginormous girl’s win for Best New Artist. Jesse had called it a totally arbitrary category, but still, Emily had got to trot up onto the stage and win an award and had cried for five minutes on Beca’s shoulder.

That’s how they had ended up doing shots at the bar, while other awards were run through and artists performed. Chloe Beale had totally blown up the stage, running through a pop medley with like four billion other artists and – for some reason beyond Beca – Billy Joel.

And then Beca had made the unwise choice to join a line. And she was going to die before she ever got in there, because the television was ramping up to announce Alternative Album of the Year, where Fjords was nominated. And she was in line for the bathroom.

The reason for the line became apparent when she was ushered in, after an annoyed looking blonde and a very tall brunette came out. The taller one pretty much stared straight down Beca’s outfit with an appraising look – a dumb, plunging blazer thing that Jessica, her well-meaning manager had insisted was good, and which had caused Jesse to pretend to faint.

The blonde had just huffed, saying, “Excuse me,” in that way that meant like, “Why are you even standing here?” that Beca didn’t particularly enjoy.

So Beca went in, got it all out before the award was announced, and just as she was about to start washing her hands, she heard over the PA system – “And the winner is…Fjords!”

She kind of screamed, and started singing along to the song playing as the band walked from their distant position four billion light years away from the stage. That was her song. Or, their song, but she had produced it. Had listened to it over and over, fixing it over and over until it was near perfect.

“I’m going to cross that gorge to wherever you are, I’m gonna climb the face of the mountain side, I’m gonna follow you near and far, I’m gonna join you on the ride,” she sings along, half-dancing. It takes her a second, but she realizes someone is singing along with her. Someone whose voice is very familiar.

She whirls around, flinging water from her handwashing onto Chloe Beale, who is smiling down at her from enormous heels, wearing a fire engine red dress, and is just…there. Chloe Beale.

“Whoa, dude,” Beca yelps, backing up and almost falling down in her heels, which she had tried to tell Jessica she would break her ankle in. She had insisted, and now, Beca was going to need an ambulance because she had broken her ankle while half-drunk in the bathroom thanks to Chloe Beale. God, what would the EMTs say?

“You’re a good singer,” is what Chloe Beale says – and oh my God, Chloe Beale is even prettier close up, which is almost annoying.

“Um, thank you,” Beca says, unsure of what else can be said. “Um, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” Chloe says, and she smiles like she is not sorry at all. She moves a little closer to Beca, which is pretty terrifying. “I love Fjords. I’m glad they won too.”

Beca kind of knew Chloe loved Fjords – had heard her cover this song, actually, thanks to Alan’s fierce love of hunting down YouTube videos of people covering his songs, and like, Buzzfeed and everyone else and their mother posting video of it.

“Yeah, um,” Beca starts, but she hears the beginning of the acceptance speech and starts to listen, while Chloe starts washing her hands. Chloe Beale, is just standing there with Beca in companionable silence. Oh God, she feels so drunk right now.

“The first person we have to thank,” she hears Jenny start, “is Beca Mitchell, who took us under her wing at 4AD and dragged this album out of us.”

“Oh my God,” Beca says, and her phone starts buzzing away, or at least, she notices it just now. It’s literally pouring over with messages, and the one at the very top is just Jesse saying BECAW BECAW BECAW over and over.

“You’re Beca Mitchell!” Chloe says, pointing at her then, her hands now washed and Beca is reminded then that she’s in the room with like, the most famous pop star in the world right now. Jesus Christ.

“You know who I am?” Beca asks, holding on to the edge of the sink firmly so she doesn’t fall down under the weight of all the things happening to her right now. Chloe takes a hold of her arm immediately, seeming to realize that Beca is about to pass out or something. Beca’s not really into touching, and thinks to move away, but she’s kind of just in shock, probably.

“I live in L.A., not under a rock,” Chloe says. “I download your mashups, the ones you put online.”

“Um, wow, this is, uh,” Beca says, and then just stops, because like, what was going to happen with that sentence? She didn’t know. She tries to shake her shock and excitement and alcohol out of her head. When she finishes shaking herself like a dog, Chloe Beale is still there, a hand on her arm, looking like a fucking movie star.

“You look great,” Chloe says, her eyes trailing down Beca’s body in a like, kind of weird predatory way that Beca does actually jerk away from. Because she’s in the bathroom at the damn Staples Center getting hit on.

“Um, yeah, so do you? I liked your performance,” Beca says. “I mean, I don’t know why Billy Joel was there. But you were great, and you looked…also great.”

Jesus. This is why she didn’t try to socialize with people. This is why she was considered a hermit by everyone on the label.

“Chloe, we need to get you back in your seat, Album of the Year is about to be announced,” some girl says, pushing the door open and stopping short at Beca being there at all. “Hello.”

“Uh,” Beca says, like an inarticulate idiot. She was going to punch Jesse for giving her shots. He should’ve known she’d run into Chloe Beale in the bathroom.

“This is Beca Mitchell,” Chloe says, putting her hand on Beca’s arm again, where it slides down the length of the arm of her jacket and just barely glances off her hand. The blonde looks unimpressed by Beca, which, honestly, is kind of insulting. “This is my manager, Aubrey.”

“Beca, there you are!” Emily Junk appears in the doorway, her arms spread out like she’s waiting for a hug. “Oh my God, you won!”

The girl seems to realize Beca is now at the center of a social convention of Grammy award winners or something, because she stops just behind Aubrey, who’s now looking with confusion between Emily and Beca.

“Oh my God, you’re Chloe Beale,” Emily says, and then launches into a bit of a classic Emily ramble. “Oh my God, I love your album! I mean I loved the first one too, but this one is so good. Beca has this amazing mashup playlist for it, and honestly, it was really good to listen to while I was finishing my album, and I saw you when you were in Seattle, and you had such a good show, and - ”

“Legacy,” Beca finally says, reaching out frantically to stop the girl from just vomiting in excitement on Chloe fucking Beale.

“Right, yeah, anyway, you’re really good and good luck on the uh, Album of the Year thing,” the girl finishes up, her pose becoming disaffected and cool, though she grabs ahold of Beca’s hand and pulls her toward her, freeing Beca from being in Chloe Beale’s personal space.

“Thank you,” Chloe says. “I was just telling Beca I really liked her work. The Palindromes song, “Siort,” is one of my lady jams.”

The look on Chloe’s face while she says this, accompanied with the wink, illuminates enough of the meaning of ‘lady jams’ that Beca, even in her drunkenness, can pick up on it. Emily doesn’t seem to get it, and Aubrey (was that her name?) doesn’t even react.

“Dude,” Beca says, and still has nothing to add to that. Chloe just winks at her again, and Beca is like, so ready to be out of her heels that she might just intentionally break them right now.

“Chloe,” Aubrey, who seems like kind of a jerk, says again. Chloe smiles in this kind of placating way and brushes her hand down Beca’s arm one last time before walking out of the bathroom with her manager heatedly whispering at her. There’s a beat of silence that follows, but Emily has never been good at that.

“So,” Emily says, not moving and still holding onto Beca’s non-Chloe Beale-touched-arm. “That was Chloe Beale. You won a Grammy. I won a Grammy.”

“She touched my arm,” Beca mutters, rubbing at the spot. It vaguely feels different from the rest of her body, but that could be because she’s a little drunk. And she has a Grammy now. On the television at the bar, where Jesse has taken up residency and has shots waiting for them, Barbra Streisand and Ice Cube are walking up to announce Album of the Year.

“Becaw! A Grammy! All I have to do is pull a John Williams, and we’ll be the hottest pickups that aren’t major pop stars in town!” he yells, throwing an arm around Beca and hauling her into her seat. She almost plants her face against the bar.

“Dude, chill,” she starts to say, but stops as they show clips of the nominees. Bumper Allen, the winner from last year, was smirking at the camera when it cut to him. Chloe smiled widely when it came to her. A few seats in, there was Taylor Swift, giving a thumbs up.

“God, I hope she beats that weirdo,” Emily says, nudging at Beca with a grin, like she knows something, or something. Beca throws a shot back to ignore her.

“Five dollars he tries to pull a Kanye if he wins,” Jesse says, and Beca immediately shakes her head ‘no.’ All the other nominees are getting piled on to the screen.

“Hundred he tries and gets knocked out by security,” Beca says, and Jesse shakes her hand with conviction.

“And the winner is…” Ice Cube starts, before handing the envelope over to Barbra, who opens it with aplomb. There’s an enormous pause that stretches over what feels like eons. Thousands of people at Columbia and RCA are waiting to hear the answer to this question, so they can slap stickers onto the winner’s album.

“Chloe Beale!” Barbara says, and Bumper is already half-standing before he even realizes that he hadn’t won. The camera cuts away from him quickly, while Chloe starts crying, reaching down the aisle to Taylor, who looks ridiculously thrilled, which is nice. Aubrey, the angry blonde, gives Chloe a tight hug, saying something in her ear.

By the time Chloe’s up on the stage, the whole audience is actually standing, probably at least thirty percent out of relief that Bumper Allen hadn’t won. Probably forty in recognition of the newest pop princess.

“Wow,” Chloe says, as everyone quiets down. “Wow, thank you. I mean, there are so many people I have to thank, and I want to thank all of them. I wouldn’t be up here without the investment of so many people, from my parents to my family, to like, Taylor Swift who said that I would feel like an ridiculous idiot up here if I won, and I really, really do.”

The video cuts to Taylor briefly, because the cameras can’t resist that girl. Beca makes a noise of irritation, but the video pulls back to Chloe, who’s looking kind of…thoughtful.

“I want to say, I guess, that you should follow the music, wherever it takes you. In a general sense, follow your passion. I’m up here because I followed my passion, and obviously with a lot of additional luck. But don’t ever let someone tell you you can’t do something. Do what you want to do, and do it for you.”

“That’s like, ten times more elegant than I was,” Emily says, but she’s crying a little. Beca nudges at her in an attempt to console her, but she’s also crying a little.

“Thank you, everyone! You can go party now!” she says, holding her award up triumphantly, and as the crowd laughs, the doors from the arena push open. While Jesse and Emily grab ahold of their drinks and down them as quickly as possible so they can beat the traffic to the parties, Beca watches Chloe Beale walk off the stage.

-

“Why are we here again?” Beca yells into Emily’s ear as literally thousands of small children scream at the kid coming on stage with a guitar seven times too big slung across his body. “Also, are you sure there’s no alcohol? And that you don’t have any Advil?”

“This is easily the seventh time in the last forty minutes you’ve asked those questions,” Emily says, laughing. Next to Emily, Benji claps loudly for whoever that kid is. On the other side of Benji, Jesse whistles so loudly that Beca almost leaps across the two people between them to strangle him.

“Hey Kids Choice Awards! It’s such an honor to be here!” the kid says, almost like he actually means it. The kids, of course, scream back at him as the stage begins to fill in behind him with a band of people.

“I want you to meet my family,” he says. “We’re in a band called The Wingnuts!”

The lights come up on the band, and the whole vaguely lookalike TV family waves out as they get settled in front of their instruments. Beca is 95% sure that only like, two of them can actually play those instruments. She knows for sure that the bassist, a like, seven year-old girl, is holding her bass the wrong way, with the pickguard above the strings.

“Go mom!” Emily yells, standing up, as if her mom can actually hear her. Mrs. Junk is enjoying her relative retirement from the music industry by being the cool backup singer, keyboard playing mom on some kids show, which is cool and all, if it didn’t involve Beca having to support her visibly at the most annoying award show on planet earth.

Even if the woman still had the voice of an angel and had gifted Beca with one of her weirdo best friends, she could have done something more tasteful. Like an acoustic album, with a low-key tour that Beca could have bought alcohol at.

“Let’s go guys!” the boy calls out, and the music starts up. From what it sounds like, none of their vocals but his and Mrs. Junk’s are live; and none of the instruments are at all. Beca nods along to the music anyway, because it does sound somewhat approaching okay – she might have opted for a non-love song, if it were up to her, because it’s kind of weird that a whole family is singing a personal love song, but that was just her –

“I want to introduce a friend of the family to the stage,” Mrs. Junk yells out, in a break from the song. “Here’s Chloe Beale!”

The crowd reaches a deafening roar as Chloe walks onto the stage, waving excitedly at the audience, a mic already perched on her head. She gives the lead singer kid a kiss on the cheek that prompts screeches from the girls in the audience, too, and she picks the song up from there easily.

Beca finds herself being pulled to her feet by Emily, ignoring that she can feel a camera trained on the younger Junk, and therefore her. She claps along to the now-even-creepier song, trying to ignore that Benji seems to know all the words to the song, and that Jesse is seamlessly singing the vocals to “Your Turn,” mixing them into The Wingnuts’ apparent juvenile classic song whose name Beca does not actually know.

God, the amount of times she considers murdering Jesse a day is probably worthy of psychological study. She knows she’s going to end up mixing the songs by the end of the week.

When the song ends, and the Rock or someone comes on stage next, Emily starts ushering them out of their seats to go see her mom backstage so that the two can go present an award later on or something. Beca immediately takes the opportunity to start making fun of Benji for knowing all of the words to the Wingnuts’ song, while Jesse and Emily quote from the Rock’s astounding and varied filmography at each other.

“Dude, you’re a huge Wingnuts fan, then,” Beca says, nudging the taller boy. Benji does his adorable giggle-blush routine, awkwardly turning his neck and nodding. But he sings the song back to her anyway, in his stupidly beautiful voice.

“Baby, I want to take you out to ice cream, want to hold your hand all night long,” he croons, all Broadway vibrato and four billion times better than the thirteen year-old onstage five minutes ago had sang it. “Future classic.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Beca says, laughing as security lets them through a backdoor to get to the dressing rooms backstage. “That better be on your next album, right between, “What I Did for Love” and “All I Ask of You.””

“Let me be your freedom, let daylight dry your tears. I’m here, with you, beside you, to guard you and to guide you,” Benji sings, his smile taking up at least half his face, entreatingly nudging at Beca until she gives in.

“Say you love me every waking moment, turn my head with talk of summertime. Say you need me with you now and always, promise me that all you say is true,” Beca sings, letting Benji wrap her up in a serious Broadway embrace, waltzing her down the hallway.

“That’s all I ask of you,” a familiar voice joins her as she sings it, and Benji spins her out of his embrace near-beautifully while they laugh as the group turns the corner and into Mrs. Junk’s solo dressing room.

“Mom, you guys were awesome!” Emily says, rushing in and hugging Mrs. Junk.

“Thank you honey! And, Beca, I didn’t know you could do Broadway,” Mrs. Junk says, hugging her daughter tightly, then reaching for Beca.

“I have many secrets,” Beca says, hugging Mrs. Junk and laughing when the woman starts to sing in her ear. “Don’t cry for me Argentina, the truth is, I never left you…”

“Mom, no one in this dressing room needs to see you do a full-scale reproduction of your time as Evita,” Emily says, stopping her mother in her tracks. Everyone laughs.

“I do,” Benji says, and Mrs. Junk laughs, letting go of Beca with a peck to the side of her head to reach for the perfect future son-in-law boy that he is. “Tell me before I waltz out of your life, before turning my back on the past, forgive my impertinent behavior, but how long do you think this pantomime can last?”

“No, Benji, do not indulge her,” Emily starts to say, but Mrs. Junk is already joining Benji in the requisite waltz.

“Tell me before I ride off in the sunset, there’s one thing I never got clear, how can you claim you’re our savior, when those who oppose you are stepped on or cut up, or simply disappear?”

“Tell me before you get onto your bus, before joining the forgotten brigade, how can one person like me, say, alter the time-honored way the game is played?” Mrs. Junk sings, dancing with Benji in the midst of the dressing room while Jesse claps along to the beat of the waltz and Emily sighs heavily. Beca pats her on the shoulder.

“Oh, wow, Catherine, you should revive Evita immediately,” another voice adds, and Jesse turns from his place in the doorway to reveal Chloe Beale. Beca practically falls over. Because she backs up quickly and trips on the carpet. Emily pats her on the shoulder.

“Thank you, Chloe,” Mrs. Junk says, spinning out from Benji’s perfect waltz form and greeting Chloe in the doorway with a huge hug, before throwing an arm around the redhead’s shoulders. “Meet my kids!”

“Mom, I’m your only kid,” Emily says, in her my mom is embarrassing me voice. It’s Beca’s favorite Emily voice.

“I count the other three,” Mrs. Junk whispers to Chloe, loudly enough that the whole room hears it. “Emily, a Grammy award winner, you may have heard of her. Biologically, she is mine. My lovely future son-in-law, Benji, Tony-award nominee.”

Benji waves so awkwardly that Beca cringes for him, and he steps forward to shake Chloe’s hand, and Chloe indulges him with a sweet smile like she doesn’t mind at all that he’s being so weird. Which is nice of her.

“An honor to meet you,” he says. Jesse pats him on the shoulder after he steps out of Chloe’s space.

“Jesse, who is not nominated for any awards, but who I love equally as all the others,” Mrs. Junk says, gesturing at Jesse who gives a little wave. Chloe waves enthusiastically back, and her eyes drift back to Beca, who’s backed up against the couch in the dressing room, half-sitting on the couch.

“Beca Mitchell,” Chloe says, her voice lilting across Beca’s own name, and it is really awkward how much she feels her face heat up. Jesse turns to look at Beca with one of the biggest smirks she’s ever seen on his face. She almost murders him, straight up.

“You’ve met?” Mrs. Junk asks, and her face looks so thrilled that Beca is actually kind of disturbed. It shifts into an exact carbon copy of Emily’s mischievous face – one Beca usually tries to run away from when possible, because it ends with her watching The Notebook and crying, or volunteering at an animal shelter. And crying.

“Hey,” Beca says, choosing to ignore Mrs. Junk’s scary, scary face and giving a weak wave that Chloe returns with a smile. “You ready to get slimed tonight?”

“Oh, you think I’m the secret slime guest?” Chloe says, placing her hand on her chest as if she were affronted. “How do you know it isn’t the Rock?”

“I think he’s already been slimed,” Emily offers, and Jesse, a Rock connoisseur, makes his dumb thinking face.

“Beca, you can’t just ask a woman if she’s ready to get slimed,” Mrs. Junk says, also looking affronted and still looking at Beca with a smirking face, like she knows something about Beca that Beca doesn’t know. It’s disconcerting.

“Was the Rock slimed? Or was that Vin Diesel?” Jesse asks, looking behind Beca to Emily. Emily looks confused, and says, “I feel like the Rock was slimed at some point.”

Jesse moves past Beca to sit next to Emily on the couch so they can debate about the Kids Choice Awards history of sliming celebrities, like nerds. Mrs. Junk takes her eyes off of Beca when Benji starts up with, absurdly, West Side Story, prompting her into a rendition of “Tonight.”

“Tonight, tonight, it all began tonight, I saw you and the world went away,” she sings, as they once again begin waltzing.

Beca finds herself moving closer to Chloe simply to accommodate their dancefloor, and she listens to their voices blending as Chloe starts talking. She tries to focus on Chloe’s face without like, staring. It’s hard.

“It’s nice to see you again,” Chloe says, reaching out to brush her hand down Beca’s thankfully clothed arm. Chloe is wearing a newer outfit than what she wore onstage – classy jeans and heels and a summery shirt. Her hair wafts over her shoulders in curls that Beca’s hairstylist could only dream of.

“Yeah, um, you too,” Beca says. “I’m way less drunk than last time, which is kind of sad.”

“Oh, you need to be drunk to put up with me?” Chloe asks, raising her eyebrows at Beca and laughing before she even finishes the tease. Beca’s heart almost drops out of her chest anyways.

“I need it more to deal with all the screaming kids,” Beca says, and Chloe laughs again, putting her hands on Beca’s arm again, and she tries to be normal so hard.

“Tonight, tonight, the world is full of light, with suns and moons all over the place. Tonight, tonight, the world is wild and bright, going mad, shooting sparks into space,” Mrs. Junk and Benji are singing, their voices reaching the crescendo of the song. It thankfully pulls Beca away from the feeling of Chloe Beale’s hand on her arm just enough that she doesn’t faint.

“We keep running into each other,” Chloe observes, pulling Beca’s attention fully back to her. She doesn’t really know what to say to that, so she just resorts to the sarcastic response that pops into her head.

“Twice isn’t a pattern,” Beca says, and Chloe cocks her head at Beca with a smile playing across her face.

“I liked that mashup you put out a week ago,” Chloe offers, and Beca freezes, trying to remember what the damn thing had been, even though she usually has an impeccable memory when it comes to her own music. God, pretty girls just completely fuck her up. This was even worse than that Kommissar woman she had met once before passing off to some other producer out of complete fear. Chloe seems to catch on. “It was “The Hills” and “Siort.””

“Um, yeah, thank you,” Beca says, shrugging. “It was…yeah.”

“Very, sexy. Thanks for making my lady jam even better,” Chloe says, with a heavy wink, and Beca remembers very suddenly how “Siort” had got lodged in her head again. She groans.

“You know, normal people don’t just go around saying stuff like that,” Beca says, and Chloe laughs, this happy laugh that makes Beca half-smile, before she remembers she’s supposed to be irritated. Thankfully, a PA appears behind Chloe in the doorway, knocking on the frame.

“Mrs. Junk, Ms. Junk, your cue is in two minutes,” he says, and there’s a bit of a scramble while Emily stands up and Mrs. Junk and Benji stop dancing around and they check themselves in the mirror.

“Be back in ten,” Mrs. Junk says, brushing past Beca and Chloe, looking straight at Beca as she says, “no one destroy the dressing room while I’m gone.”

“Ms. Beale, your cue is in 10 minutes,” the PA adds, and then he scurries off, leading Emily and Mrs. Junk down the hallway and around a corner.

“I should get back to my own dressing room,” Chloe says. “It was nice seeing you again, Beca. And meeting you, Benji, and Jesse.”

Benji and Jesse both wave happily at her and say nice things. Beca doesn’t quite hear them, because Chloe steps way too close to Beca, and then fucking hugs her.

“Does three times make a pattern?” Chloe whispers in her ear, and Beca shivers, because, like, well. Who wouldn’t shiver when Chloe Beale is pressed close and whispering in their ear? She halfheartedly hugs Chloe back and shrugs.

“If we get there, I’ll let you know,” Beca says, and Chloe laughs, pulling away. With one last wink and a drag of the palm of her hand down Beca’s entire fucking arm, she’s out of the room, leaving Beca dazed and not ready to turn around to face Jesse’s teasing right now.

“Dude,” she hears Jesse say. God, she really is going to kill him one day.

-

Thanks for the slime, @KidsChoice! It’s always been my dream!  
- **Chloe Beale** (@bealechloe)

@chloebeale you were awesome! nice to meet u again!  
- **Emily Junk** (@emjunk)

@EMJunk @DJBMitch @BenjaminBroadway @SwansonJesse nice to meet all of you! i hope i get to see you again ;)  
- **Chloe Beale** (@bealechloe)

-

**From the Desk of a Working Mom**

Exciting Chloe Beale news!

Did you and your very-upset-with-you-forever twelve year-old girl miss out on Chloe Beale’s huge, sold out Cotillion tour? Here’s some good news for you! Reps for Beale have confirmed that she’s going on a June mini-tour called Southern Pride, where she’ll stop off in seven major cities during LGBT Pride month and hold concerts in celebration of, you guessed it, LGBT pride!

And just in case any homophobes or anything are about to head to my comments section, get the heck off this page! Chloe Beale is one of the best role models out there for kids, and it’s great that she’s supporting a cause she clearly cares about. Half the proceeds to the discounted concerts are going to local LGBT charities, so don’t feel bad about dropping eighty bucks to make it up to your kid for missing her the first time around.

Here’s the full tour, with dates. Times, extra guests, and ticket onsale dates are gonna be updated later by yours truly!

Miami, FL Friday, June 1  
Boston, MA Tuesday, June 5  
Washington D.C. Thursday, June 7  
New York City, NY Saturday, June 9  
Chicago, IL Friday, June 15  
San Francisco, CA Friday, June 22  
Los Angeles, CA Saturday, June 30

P.S.: Did you see Chloe on the Kids Choice Awards with The Wingnuts? She was such a good sport about getting slimed, too – I’d hate to think what it’d do to my hair!

-

“Beca, I got a call today from people at Columbia,” Jessica says, sipping her wine literally seconds after it’s been set down on the table. “Have you met Chloe Beale?”

Beca, who does not yet have the pleasure of having the drink she ordered in front of her, has a spasmodic attack of some kind, knocking half her glass of water over and watching it spill off to the side of the table. Her manager/stylist/literally everything Beca could employ someone for smiles over the rim of her glass while Beca frantically gathers up their tiny cloth napkins.

“I, sorry,” Beca says, as the waiter does, thankfully, bring over her margarita (and a bunch of towels). The girl mops it up very quickly, with a sad sigh that has Beca apologizing at least twenty times until the girl disappears again. “Sorry about that, very unprofessional.”

“I have seen you drunk on vodka-infused gummy bears in FAO Schwarz, Beca,” Jessica says, sipping again at her wine and looking very put together.

“And that was also very unprofessional of me,” Beca says, shrugging. “Though, actually, was that in college? You were probably drunk too, then.”

Jessica shrugs in response, placing her menu to the side and pulling out her official Beca book, where she keeps all sorts of weird contingency plan PR stuff, like for when Beca gets in a car crash or like, elopes. This is their official weekly business meeting, where Jessica reports on Beca’s like, life scores on social media and charts and business propositions or whatever. Beca ignores most of it, and pays Jessica way too much for it.

“Chloe Beale,” Jessica says again, prompting Beca to speak with a wave of her hand.

“We met at the Grammys,” Beca says, sighing, and sitting back in her chair, taking a long gulp of her margarita. “And at the Kids Choice Awards.”

“I’m hurt, Beca. I go on vacation one time and you don’t tell me anything,” Jessica says, leaning forward across the table. “You’ve had a crush on Chloe Beale since her first single came out, and when she came out of the closet, you threw a party, at random, and claimed it was because you were just having a great day.”

“I was having a great day,” Beca says, then shrugs again. Just to show off her total ambivalence. “It’s no big deal. We just bumped into each other twice. You don’t need to pull out one of your weird contingency plans or anything, like, made-out-with-a-pop-star or whatever.”

“While I don’t currently have one of those, I will quickly begin working on one. And you’re wrong about one thing,” Jessica says, pulling a sheaf of papers out of her book and sliding them across the table to Beca. “It is a big deal. I got a call from Columbia asking if you wanted to be an opening DJ for her on her June tour.”

“The gay one?” Beca asks, flipping the stack of papers through and seeing the familiar-unfamiliar legal shit she signs with now-alarming frequency. “What is this?”

“Yes, the gay one, Beca,” Jessica says, and then leans across the table to flip to the end. “It’s a contract for you to perform an hour-long DJ set as an opening act for Chloe Beale in seven U.S. cities throughout the month of June, rain or shine.”

“What?” Beca asks, like a dumb idiot. Jessica takes a sip of her wine in exasperation, while rolling her eyes.

“Chloe asked Columbia to put you on her tour,” Jessica says, like she’s talking to a child and jamming her index finger onto the signature line. “She wants you to go on a gay tour with her for a month.”

“Why?” Beca asks, looking around the restaurant as if she’s being Punk’d. She feels like she is. This is the kind of shit Jesse would come up with.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to interrogate her on her intentions, Becs, I just got a phone call from a grumpy manager,” Jessica says. “Please ask a question I can answer.”

“Can I do this?” Beca asks, flipping through the pages of the thick contract as if the document will speak to her. It doesn’t.

“Sure. 4AD can live without you for a month. You just won a Grammy for them anyway. Constitutionally, I don’t know. You sometimes forget English when you’re around pretty girls. It’d be bigger than performing in a dark room every Friday night or so,” Jessica says, swirling around her wine.

“She asked me to go on tour with her,” Beca says, staring down at the front of the contract, with the huge embossing of the Columbia Records logo.

“She’d even let you travel on her private plane,” Jessica says, stopping Beca’s flipping on a certain page. “And with an entourage. I have a very clear calendar for June, just so you know.”

“She wants me to go on a tour with her?” Beca asks, staring dumbly down at the papers in front of her and then looking up at Jessica in confusion. “And Columbia agreed?”

“You made some type of impression on her, Beca,” Jessica says, finishing her wine glass and waving at the waiter for more. “I’m not sure Columbia was in a place to disagree. The woman on the phone, Aubrey Posen, didn’t sound too thrilled, though.”

“What’s like, the catch?” Beca asks, waving at her own margarita for the waiter to get her more, since he’s already looking over.

“No real catch. A few maybe-sticking-points. You’d have to make time in your schedule to fly to a few locations for a few rehearsals. Pay isn’t crazy – half of ticket sales to charity, seventy-five percent of what’s left to her. You’d have to talk to the press and like, deal with being out in the sunlight while performing. You haven’t officially come out. You get embarrassing around people you think are cute.”

“I don’t – okay, she is like, not that distracting,” Beca says, thanking the waiter very appreciatively when he brings them new drinks. “I don’t want to come out.”

“I know. But you obviously saw how she came out, because you immediately organized a party afterwards. I’m just saying...” Jessica says, idly considering it and swirling her wine around in her glass. “You might get asked about it. You might have to have an answer. It is a tour in celebration of Pride Month, after all.”

“Can’t it all just be about my music?” Beca asks, sighing, looking down at the menu one more time while she watches the waiter circle around his section of the restaurant.

“Not if you’re going to tour with Chloe Beale, it can’t be,” Jessica says, in that direct way of hers that’s always cut through to Beca. That’s why she had hired her third and most successful college roommate; that, and her degree in public relations and her now-law degree.

“Did you already check with legal at 4AD?” Beca asks, fingering through the papers before flipping to the last page.

“It doesn’t violate your contract there,” Jessica says. “Listen, Beca. We’ve been publicizing you as the on-the-edge-of-stardom for almost a year now. This could be it, your shot to break into the big leagues. Columbia has your manager’s number.”

“I lied. She is really distracting,” Beca whispers, looking up at Jessica. “She’s really, really pretty in person.”

Jessica looks at Beca with that knowing look of hers.

“I’ll work on contingency plans,” Jessica says.

Beca signs the contract after a hefty sip of her margarita.

-

Word on the street is that @DJBMitch is going on tour with @bealechloe this summer! Who will Los Angeles club-goers jam to while she’s gone? Check out these possible replacements > bit.ly/asfjl1k  
- **LA Club News** @LAclubkid

-

“I just need, like, a sturdy table basically,” Beca says to the head crewman. He nods, writing shit down in his notebook, way more words than what she’s actually managed to say. The crew is downsizing from Cotillion, and the stages are going to be smaller, but she’s been flown out on Columbia’s dime to meet with the dude anyway to begin rehearsing for the June tour.

“Any preference on lighting?” he asks, and she looks around the enormous stadium that they’ve taken up shop in in Texas. She can’t possibly imagine what it must be like to play for that many people. She’s used to clubs of maybe four hundred at most.

“Um, I like lasers?” Beca says, like that fucking means anything. She’s glad that Jesse is not by her side to hear her say that.

“Beca!”

The blur of Chloe Beale comes careening towards her, wrapping Beca up in a huge hug, unbefitting to two people who have ran into each other twice. Now three times, really. Behind Chloe, two bemused girls with dark hair amble in her wake , while Beca can catch the barest glimpse of Aubrey Posen simply standing, watching. Beca tries to ignore it, turning into Chloe’s embrace even though she usually can’t stand hugging.

“I’m so excited that you’re here and that we’re going on tour together,” Chloe says, turning to her head crewman and poking at him. “You better treat her nice, Adam.”

“Well, so far, all I have to get is a table and some lasers, so it’s hard not to be nice,” he says, laughing. Beca laughs too, even though the joke is kind of at her own expense. Chloe’s hand hovers against the small of her back, keeping her close, and that’s so distracting.

“Oh my gosh, Ashley, Stacie come here and meet Beca,” Chloe says, reaching for the two dark-haired girls and pulling them close. “This is Ashley, she’s my publicist. And this is Stacie, she’s my stylist and the costumer for the tour!”

Stacie, who’s like, an Amazon in high heels and some sort of stylish looking overall setup, grins at Beca with one of the most sexual smiles she’s ever seen. It’s confusing and scary, and she finds herself looking over her own shoulder in search of her own friendly face.

“Jessica, get your butt over here,” she says, finally spotting the girl talking to a dancer. She ambles over dutifully, and Beca cleaves to her side quickly. “This is Jessica, we went to college together and now she like, runs my life.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jessica says, offering a hand in greeting to Chloe, who ignores it to pull Jessica into a hug. The other two shake her hand like normal people who don’t just hug near-strangers. “I’m the smartest member of her entourage.”

“You’re the only person in my entourage,” Beca says, and everyone laughs at that. Stacie speaks up.

“So, Becs, do I need to get you some sexy DJ outfits or something? Are you into leather?”

What the hell is wrong with the people Chloe chooses to surround herself with?

“Ooh, leather,” Chloe says, tugging at the fabric of Beca’s jacket and winking at her.

God help her.

-

“Why are you in town again?” Beca’s mom asks, taking a sip of her tea and tapping her fingers on the kitchen table while Beca and Jessica play a rousing game of Yahtzee with Allen, her step-dad.

“Rehearsal,” Jessica offers. “Beca is going on a tour next month.”

Allen tosses out a perfect Yahtzee just after, and Jessica lets out a long string of curse words in response. Beca sighs, accepting the blow as he gleefully marks his sheet. He gathers up all the dice and hands the little cup to Beca.

“With Chloe Beale,” her mom says, watching as Beca tosses an unhappy lot of dice and sorts through the favorites. “I heard she was dating Tom Sampson, Allen.”

“Tommy should focus on catching pop flies, not running the bases,” Allen returns, and Beca’s second throw is completely ruined by her burst of laughter. But it turns up a full house that she happily marks down as Jessica sighs in frustration.

“I don’t think she’s dating anyone,” Beca says, and her phone lights up with Chloe’s name, perfectly on time with the mention of her name. Beca had arrived to the stadium - the enormous stadium that Chloe was holding her tour stop in Seattle at - only to have her phone taken away and Chloe inputting her information.

“She isn’t,” Jessica says, and tosses a weak roll that she doesn’t even bother to keep anything from. Her second toss is even worse, and she unhappily gathers a two and a five to keep. “Ashley told me.”

“She’s very pretty,” Beca’s mom says, idly, in such a way that doesn’t sound very idle at all. Beca gives a half-second glare at her before Jessica tosses a lackluster roll that produces, in the end, a double two.

Beca checks her phone while Jessica curses some more and walks around the table to cool off. The text from Chloe reads, what are you doing? stacie and aubrey went out for dinner to some fancy sushi place and ashley and i were looking for dinner company :(

“She’s asking Beca out to dinner,” Allen says, and Beca jerks away from him, closing up her messages to keep away from her meddlesome stepfather. Jessica stops behind her to take the phone away, navigating past the passcode and into the messages easily enough.

“That’s wonderful, Beca,” her mom says, smiling happily. “She seems very kind.”

“I said yes,” Jessica says, reaching for her coat. “I cannot stand to lose at the third game in a row to you, Allen.”

“It’s hard to take on a champion,” Allen says, raising his hands in forgiveness. Beca makes an annoyed noise as Jessica starts coaxing her out of her chair and forcing her into her own coat.

“We’ll probably go to bed soon,” her mom says. “You should be home before midnight! You have work tomorrow.”

“Mom, I’m not fourteen,” Beca says, as Jessica grabs the rental car keys. “And it’s hardly work. I just have to stand behind a table and play music. Also, I don’t want to go to dinner, Jessica!”

“You do want to go to dinner, honey,” Allen says, very nicely, reaching to pat Beca on the arm. “It can’t be a bad thing to hang out with a pop star who you’re going on tour with! Maybe she’ll buy you nice things.”

“It’s a professional opportunity,” her mom says, and Jessica nods in excitement, saying goodbye and ushering Beca out of the house and into the car. Twenty minutes later, and they’re outside a diner that Beca had gone to every Thursday night with the entire theatre crew.

“Why aren’t we at like, a nice restaurant?” Beca asks, tugging at her coat collar and checking her phone, where Chloe’s last text reads on our way ;)

“The high schoolers here are stoned and the families are too busy reigning in their crazy kids to care if Chloe Beale is in there with them,” Jessica says. “Are we ever going to talk about the coming out thing, by the way? Aubrey was asking.”

“Aubrey hates me,” Beca mutters. Jessica sighs, turning to face Beca more over the center console.

“Don’t make this one of those things that’s about one thing and somehow make it about another thing,” Jessica says, shaking her finger in Beca’s face. She smacks it away.

“She does hate me, and I don’t do that thing,” Beca says.

“You do do that thing. Remember when you jumped from Residual to 4AD and you said, oh, it’s not because I feel creatively stifled and want to grow but it’s scary and Los Angeles sucks, it’s because Jesse is making me move to Los Angeles, and you were pissed at him for like a whole month before we made you sit down and talk about your actual feelings of fear and shit?” Jessica says, poking Beca in the shoulder.

“I talk about my feelings,” Beca says, looking out the window as a chunk of kids come ambling out, spreading out to separate cars throughout the parking lot.

“Then what are your feelings about coming out?” Jessica asks, very pointedly.

“I don’t want to.”

“Aubrey thinks it would be weird for you to come on an LGBT pride tour and refuse to come out,” Jessica says, like Beca is an idiot.

“I don’t need to come out. I’m a producer and sometimes I do DJ stuff. I want to make music and not be bothered about who I’m dating,” Beca says, then sighs, looking over at Jessica in exasperation. “You know this. I’ve told you this.”

“I understand this and told Aubrey this,” Jessica says, looking Beca in the eye and as kindly as possible. “She’s right though. The optics are weird.”

“Don’t say optics,” Beca says. “You sound like Aubrey and Ashley. I liked it more when you said jurisprudence and like, pejorative.”

“When I was in law school, three years ago?” Jessica asks, smiling. “And hey, I know Aubrey is a bit of an oddball, but Ashley is nice.”

“Jesse told me that you think Ashley is hot,” Beca says, and Jessica acts very offended, whipping her head around as though some other person has said this deeply insulting thing.

“You would believe whatever social insight Jesse could give you, because you are oblivious,” Jessica says, not bothering to argue over Beca’s comment. It’s true enough - Beca has never been very good at interpersonal relationships. She starts to pop open the door to the car to just - get out of Jessica’s overbearing, question-filled atmosphere. Jessica follows suit, and they barely make it four steps before Beca gets tackled by an exuberant Chloe Beale, wearing a beanie and sweatpants.

“Jesus Christ!” Beca yells, disturbing a goose somewhere near them in the parking lot enough that it squawks at them angrily. She tries to let her body loosen up, but Chloe drops her nearly instantly, looking at her in concern.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” she says, reaching out one hand to touch Beca’s shoulder but stopping before she reaches her body. “Are you okay? I’m sorry.”

“I’m chill,” Beca says, then cringes. Chill. “I’m okay. You just surprised me. A little.”

“Beca’s a control freak who hates surprises,” Jessica says, gripping Beca’s arm as Ashley gives a small smile and wave routine. This nervousness makes Beca feel a little better, along with the familiar hand. “I tried to throw a surprise party for her senior year and she threw up.”

“Oh, I love surprises,” Chloe says, putting her hand through Ashley’s arm and setting off towards the door of the diner. “I’m very open to life’s experiences. I’ve gone cliff diving.”

“Did Aubrey condone that?” Beca asks, and Jessica squeezes again, probably in some warning way. Chloe laughs, pushing open the door and allowing Ashley to head through and Jessica to pass through as well. Beca shares, for half a second, a very small space with Chloe Beale’s body that feels like the earth falling out from under her.

“She jumped with me,” Chloe says, smiling gently. Beca smiles back. She tries to calm down. It doesn’t work so much.

-

The leather vest she has been conned into wearing by the various encouragements of Stacie, Jessica, Ashley, and Chloe is hot as hell when she’s on the stage, with her damn lasers going off around her. There are dancers flipping around in front of her, which is pretty distracting, but as she keys up the last track meant to bridge into Chloe’s arrival, she has all but forgotten about all of that.

The music echoing through the arena she’s rehearsing in – Nashville’s dumb hockey arena, which had an abnormal amount of yellow spread throughout it – sounds amazing, and it sounds even better in her own headphones. Crew members are serving as the audience, dancing around in the darkness.

Her fingers float over the mixer, bumping in little tracks of drum and adding waves of synth to hint at the mix she’s creating to close her set. “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood (“An inspired choice, Beca,” Mrs. Junk had said when she had mentioned it at dinner a few nights ago) is whining through the speaker systems, and she’s cutting it through with layers and layers of darker vocals on the song.

By now, she’s got this down to a T – this mix has perfectly crystallized in her head and her hands, like the whole set – which is good, because she’s playing it on the beach in three days. Off to the side of the stage, she can see Chloe bouncing to the song, her mic in hand.

“Relax, don’t do it, I’m on, I’m on parade,” the music splits, the mashup breaking the new song in. Chloe charges onto the stage, followed by like, ten more dancers, singing the mix in its total sum.

Beca was at first distracted by Chloe singing, when you want to come, over and over, but by now, her hands are on autopilot, watching Chloe and the dancers simply go to town on the song, weaving through each other and arriving to their perfect places with all sorts of backflips and splits and grinding motions.

Chloe sends Beca a look as she heads upstage to Beca’s indeed very sturdy table, dancing against it quite wantonly. As the choreography calls for, which Beca had wanted to object to. But Adam had insisted the table was indeed sturdy enough to deal with Chloe Beale using it as a prop, and that had been that.

Beca jams her fingers down on the buttons of her mixer, adding random sounding reverbs that keep Chloe’s voice circling around Frankie’s. In the meantime, Chloe’s real voice is bursting through to the first chorus of “Parade,” and she’s staring at Beca as she quits the mashup to play in-house producer on the song.

She’s heard it enough times before these rehearsals to know how to make the noises Calvin Harris had created for the song; and by now, she’s got it down to a science. The buttons give at just the right time, and the song benefits from the slightly upped electronic element that Beca had chosen for this arrangement. Chloe’s voice sounds more natural, her voice more throaty and stupidly sensual.

God, Beca feels like she could just make music for that voice forever.

Eventually, though, the song ends – and Chloe is pointing at Beca, saying, “Say thanks to that hottie, Beca Mitchell, for getting you guys pumped!”

The crowd of about thirty cheers loudly, as Beca’s work station starts to descend below the stage into the trapdoor. Chloe’s ass is literally the last of the stage she sees, once again. It’s very fitting. The minute she sinks out of view, her table is being unlocked and rolled off the door, and Beca is stepping off so that it can go back up.

“Great job, Beca,” Jessica yells over the sound of the next song’s guitars, grabbing Beca and hurrying them through the catacombs under the stage. Ashley, who is adhered to Jessica’s side, yells too. “I think we’ve got this!”

In the dressing rooms, Stacie is fiddling with one of the dancers’ rainbow tutus on the ground, while Aubrey is staring unhappily up at the on-stage televisions.

“Let me just say, I’m so glad I suggested the leather,” Stacie says, just as Beca pulls the hot vest from her body and hands it over to one of the costuming assistants. “All the ladies will want your hot ass.”

“Beca, you can’t keep improvising that song,” Aubrey says. “What if you throw Chloe off?”

Beca sighs, grabbing one of the water bottles on the table in the room and turning to look at Aubrey. Who is glaring, as is her current custom with Beca. Ashley and Jessica mysteriously move away simultaneously, sitting next to each other at the table and looking at their iPads for what Beca is sure is their weird addiction to checking Google Alerts.

“I’m not going to throw her off,” Beca says. “I don’t change anything about the vocal track.”

“We should play a pre-recorded mix that won’t change at all,” Aubrey says, turning her eyes away from Beca as if the girl is not even worth the waste of eye effort. Beca almost tosses her water bottle at Aubrey’s head. As if she’s ever going to mime mixing up there to a pre-recorded track.

“The only thing that would throw Chloe off is how fucking hot Beca looks in her leather vest,” Stacie says, tossing one tutu aside and reaching for another one. Beca looks down at her in silent thanks, and also in silent please don’t draw any attention to anything.

“Be that as it may, I’m just concerned about Chloe’s routine. It’s important that her voice is always in top shape, and deviating from routine can only hurt it,” Aubrey says, looking at Stacie with a look that screams you should understand this. Beca sighs again, sitting on the couch.

“She’s fine, Aubrey,” Stacie says, tossing a tutu at the blonde. She catches it, sighing as though she’s going through a mental countdown in her head to calm her anxiety or something (probably actually happening).

“You are very good, Beca,” Aubrey says. “Not my cup of tea, exactly, but you are good.”

It’s a halfway-to-normal exchange, and so Beca nods, trying to get over the anger still welling over the very thought of doing a prerecorded track, like she’s Milli Vanilli or something.

“Tom Sampson and Chloe are supposedly dating,” Ashley says, holding up her iPad with an article splashed on the glass.

“Who the hell is Tom Sampson?” Aubrey asks, standing up and heading over to the table to look over Ashley’s shoulder.

“He plays baseball for the Mariners,” Beca says, then shrugs when Aubrey and Ashley look at her curiously. They begin to pore over whatever weird article they’ve got on their hands. Beca finally takes a moment to rest, sucking down water and trying to cool down from her set while Chloe jams away on stage. Stacie throws a tutu at her legs to grab her attention.

“Sorry about,” Stacie says, her head cocking towards Aubrey. “Control freak.”

“Yeah, a little bit,” Beca says, drinking more water and fingering the tulle of the tutu that’s settled on her feet. “It’s fine. As long as that’s just her and not Chloe. I don’t want to actually fuck her up.”

“You won’t fuck Chloe up by adding random synth noises, babe,” Stacie says idly, and Beca has just a few precious seconds to gather up a sense of foreboding. “Maybe some other ways, though.”

She chokes on the water in her mouth, and Jessica looks up with concern. Beca waves her attention away; the damn girl has seen Beca get embarrassed way too many times.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Beca says, and Stacie raises one perfect eyebrow at her.

“Sure, small one. Sure.”


	2. Let's Embrace the Point of No Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. My tumblr is also named mooosicaldreamz. Fun fact.

**So I went to see Chloe in Miami…**  
posted by chloebeales

She was so awesome! The show was a lot like her tour, but there were a bunch more covers, which was super cool. She did “True Colors” like everyone was saying she might, and the crowd was so into it. I got some shitty pics that I’ll post later, and a video of her singing “Clay.”

Beca Mitchell, the opener, was actually really good too, and I usually hate like, DJ/club stuff. Chloe actually sang along with one of the mashups she made. She also was kind of hot, too, which probably helped my opinion of her.

-

“Why is it so hot?” Beca asks, tugging at the shirt she has on and trying to move it away from her too-sticky body. Performing with that damn vest on had been hell in this Miami heat, but now it was off, and it was still too hot.

Aubrey, the nearest person who still had a shirt on, shrugged, sipping her wine (who has wine outside at a pool party?) and ignoring the splash at her feet when Stacie tries to get their attention.

“You two should take off your clothes,” Stacie says, gripping Aubrey by the ankle and assuring that her eyes move downward, simply so Stacie doesn’t pull the girl into the water. Beca steps back a little as Stacie starts to reach out her other hand towards Beca’s feet.

“I would rather talk with Beca about the humidity of this godforsaken city,” Aubrey says, arching an eyebrow down at Stacie when the girl sticks her tongue out. Beca spots Chloe swimming her way over to them, from a disconcerting distance to be noticing someone.

“Beca would probably not like to hear about your meteorology minor, babe,” Stacie says, and Chloe arrives with a bit of a splash. It hits the bottom of Beca’s jean shorts, and she squeaks a little bit at the view she is now receiving.

“You were a math major, Stacie,” Aubrey says, and Stacie shrugs. Chloe joins in, happily.

“I was an English major, since we’re sharing,” Chloe says, then reaches out of the water to nudge at Beca’s shin. “Why aren’t you in the water? You deserve a good float after tonight.”

“I’m not a good swimmer,” Beca says. “You three are nerds, by the way.”

“Meteorology is a very practical minor,” Aubrey says, then smiles. “I can always tell when I need to bring an umbrella.”

“A necessity only for people who get put in a bad mood if they can’t be in control of every minute of every day,” Stacie says, splashing at Aubrey’s feet once again. “Get in the water, you two. If you don’t, I will make Jessica push you in.”

“Jessica loves me and would never do that to me,” Beca says, turning to eye Jessica, who’s talking with Ashley at the table behind them, apparently watching the exchange with some interest. Jessica throws her a look that seems to express that she is not beyond enforcing fun.

“It makes sense to care about the weather,” Aubrey says, still focused on being called a control freak. “Like my father - ”

“Aubrey, sweetheart, I’ve heard more inspirational quotes from Chloe’s depressing Russian books than from your father,” Stacie says, and Aubrey seems to consider this for a moment before she pulls her shirt straight off her head and nearly hits Beca with her flailing arm. Within seconds, she’s in the water, letting Stacie guide her over to a basketball hoop where a spirited game is going on.

“That’s actually true, you know,” Chloe says, reaching out of the water to tap at Beca’s foot. Beca tries not to let it show how much she focuses on the touch. “One of her father’s favorite sayings involves a drowning metaphor.”

“At least it’s not a book about a dude’s love for a child,” Beca says, and Chloe gasps, placing one hand on her chest, drawing Beca’s attention right back to where it had tried to avoid for the last two minutes.

“That’s not what the book is about!” Chloe exclaims, looking like she’s half-ready to climb out of the pool to argue the finer points with Beca. She decides against it, apparently, gripping Beca by the ankle and looking at her very seriously. “Take off your clothes, and get in this pool so I can tell you how wrong you are.”

“I have to be wet so you can do that?” Beca asks, shrugging off the choice of words. Chloe seems too focused on defending her Russian novels to notice and nods. They engage in a staring contest for what feels like forever before Beca gets too hot (thanks, Miami humidity levels) and decides maybe it is actually better in the pool - screw privacy.

She tries to get her clothes off and get in without acknowledging Chloe’s eyes, but they’re hard to miss once she’s in the water and pushing her hair out of her eyes.

“I’m glad I convinced you,” she says, her eyes stuck somewhere beneath the water. Beca splashes at her, largely out of nothing much to say to that.

“I was supposed to hear about how fucked up my opinions on Lolita are, or something, if I recall,” Beca says, trying to stray back to safer topics. Which, with Chloe Beale, apparently are complicated Russian novels. “Which, who cares that much about what Lolita is actually about? Are you one of those people who makes sure that people reference Frankenstein as Frankenstein’s monster?”

“I like romance and drama,” Chloe says, shrugging, splashing Beca lazily and drifting away from the edge of the pool. Beca follows mindlessly. “They’re very dramatic, those Russians.”

“I like romance and drama too,” Beca says, shrugging. “But I ended up with a business degree so I could start making music.”

“My brother says that I like the Russians because I decided to read my mom’s copy of Anna Karenina after she died,” Chloe says, moving straight into Beca’s very personal space when someone crashes into her from behind. Beca throws whoever it is - maybe one of the lighting guys? - a glare that has him backing away in the middle of his apology. Chloe just laughs, not really moving away from Beca’s body.

The light brush of Chloe’s leg drifting past hers draws Beca away from her glaring.

“How did she die?” Beca asks, like an idiot. She immediately tries to backtrack, because she wasn’t raised in a fucking barn with zero social graces. “I mean, sorry. I’m sorry, my condolences. I just mean, I knew that she died, and I - okay. Okay, I’m sorry, I will swim away, towards - ”

Chloe grabs her arm, and laughs. She fucking laughs, like Beca is cute and funny, and Beca actually kind of swoons. She takes a half second glance behind her, where Jessica is watching her with a raised eyebrow. When she turns back around, she spots Aubrey behind Chloe, watching them as well.

Good lord, what the hell is she doing?

-

“Dude, do not fucking touch me right now,” Beca says, shoving Jessica’s body away from hers. “This is serious shit. This is real.”

“You,” Jessica says, poking at Beca’s side and causing a giggle that she would never admit to letting out, fucking ever. “You are drunk. As your manager, I cannot allow you to play skeeball drunk.”

“Eff off, man,” Beca says, throwing up her middle finger and taking a chug of her vodka soda. Jessica matches her, and then yells over to Ashley to bring them new drinks. Ashley, who’s at the bar already, waves a hand in acknowledgment.

“Beca Mitchell, there’s no way in hell you can beat me, the skeeball master, while you’re wasted. And the last time you lost to me, you punched a wall, and tomorrow, you have to go entertain thousands of people with your hands,” Jessica says, waving a finger in Beca’s face.

“Dirty,” another voice says, and Beca feels someone drape over her shoulders. The strands of red hair that land against her face give her a clue over who it is.

Beca turns in Chloe’s hands to look the girl over. It’s their offday between shows and travel – they’ve just got to Boston, and the whole crew has taken over some arcade bar in the hipster part of town. It’s tight with all of them. There’s Chloe’s entourage, Beca’s, the twelve dancers, and all forty crew, packed up against old school gaming cabinets and pinball machines.

Chloe is smiling, and clearly a little drunk, holding what looks like some sort of fruit-based drink in one hand while the other centers itself around Beca’s neck and resting on her collarbone. Beca’s drunk enough that her body feels a little distanced from her brain, which is good, because she’s sure her skin would be on fire if she could feel Chloe’s hands really on her.

“What are we doing over here, ladies?” Chloe continues, taking a gulp of her drink and knocking her head sideways into Beca. Beca doesn’t know exactly where to put her hands, but one lands on Chloe’s arm – the one wrapped around her neck. Ashley arrives within seconds of Chloe’s question.

Jessica, the fucking skeeball master who Beca has admittedly tried to beat many times while drunk and failed every time, takes the vodka sodas from Ashley’s hands and hands one off to Beca, grinning this stupid grin at Beca.

“Beca here thinks she can beat me at skeeball,” Jessica says, gesturing at the four little lanes just beside them. “She is lying to herself.”

“I could beat you at skeeball,” Beca says, shrugging. Chloe giggles in her ear. “I just choose not to. Fuck off man.”

“Remember when you tried to beat me at Paddy O’Donovan’s in college? And you threw a ball at the owner and then you were banned?” Jessica says, sipping her drink up and staring down at Beca as if she knows literally all her secrets.

“I think I need way more college Beca stories,” Chloe says, tugging at Beca until their bodies are even closer than before. Beca ignores it by sipping up her own drink, glaring daggers at Jessica.

“Oh, Jesse has the best ones,” Jessica says, shrugging. “Listen, I’ll play you, B-Mitch. But be prepared to lose with the usual price.”

“Fuck off, this isn’t college, and there are no mics here,” Beca says, but rolls her shoulders anyway, cracking her knuckles.

“We both saw the karaoke set up when we walked in, Beca,” Jessica says ominously. Chloe gasps in her ear, now, pulling her body off Beca’s and cheering loudly, apparently in celebration of karaoke.

“You do karaoke when you lose?” Chloe asks, and Ashley groans a little bit, leaning against the table next to the machines. “Can I duet with you?”

“Dude, I haven’t lost,” Beca says, pulling quarters from her pocket and dropping them in the slot. The skeeballs roll down the chamber, loading up for her. Jessica’s lane does the same, and Beca watches Jessica do her weird routine.

“Chloe, feel free to start doing vocal warm-ups now,” Jessica says, and Chloe squeals again, setting her glass down and hovering near enough to Beca that she feels imbalanced.

“Can you, like,” Beca starts to say, but then Jessica is rolling her balls up the lane, and they’re as smooth as fucking ever, landing high scores. So Beca does the same, aiming for the 100 up top – which is almost always her first mistake. She misses, but the next one falls in, and the next, and Chloe’s presence doesn’t seem too bad now – maybe she should take Chloe to Vegas?

“You shout it out, but I can’t hear a word you say, I’m talking loud, not saying much,” Chloe starts singing, along with the sound system playing in the bar. Her voice is way low, and it’s right in Beca’s ear – she almost falls over, and her next roll ends up bouncing slowly into the 10 slot.

Beca refocuses; Jessica has one roll left, and Beca has the last one in her hand – they’re actually close in score – Jessica is up thirty, and her next roll lands in the ten when Ashley leans a bit too close into Jessica’s weird skeeball atmospheric bubble.

So she has to get a forty, fifty, or hundred. She can fucking do this, was fucking born for this, really. The ball is smooth in her hand, and now is her fucking time, man. She takes a long gulp of her drink while Jessica watches her with a dark frown. She pulls back, ready to roll the damn ball straight up the middle and nail this. Jessica would have to fucking sing “Kiss Me” for the entire crew to hear, and it would be awesome.

“This is another one of my lady jams,” Chloe whispers, suddenly very, very close to Beca. The ball flies from Beca’s hand completely wrong, and it hobbles its way into the ten ring limply. Jessica starts cheering next to her, and she and Ashley do some sort of publicist dance of celebration. Beca stares down at the ramp in near desolation.

“We get to sing together now!” Chloe says, and her hand worms its way around Beca’s own. She finds herself getting pulled through the crowds of people and onto the just barely elevated stage of the bar’s karaoke area.

“Do you tell other people your lady jams at random?” Beca asks, while some well-meaning bar employee hurriedly sets up the karaoke stuff, and she’s handed a mic. “Or is it just me who receives that pleasure?”

“Mostly just you,” Chloe says happily, nudging at Beca’s shoulder. “You can give me one of yours, if you want.”

Beca glares at Chloe, crossing her arms while Chloe flips through the music available on the machine.

““Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode,” Beca says, and Chloe’s eyes flip up to hers and widen. Chloe almost responds, but fucking Aubrey Posen appears right in front of Beca’s face.

“Chloe, what are you doing?” she asks, placing one hand protectively over the karaoke machine’s screen. Beca takes a long sip of her drink, her irritation quickly switching gears to Aubrey-mode. “Shouldn’t you be resting your voice?”

“Beca and I are just going to sing one song together,” Chloe says, her voice all small and sweet, like she’s simply asking for the easiest goddamn thing in the world. Aubrey’s eyes drift to Beca, and she stares back at the look on Aubrey’s face.

“Beca,” Aubrey says, her voice shifting to stern. “I didn’t know you could sing.”

It’s meant to embarrass Beca, or something, to knock her off her path and therefore knock Chloe off her karaoke path. It’s such a clear play that Beca is shocked that Aubrey’s made it, but maybe she’s a little drunk too.

But fuck that. Beca Mitchell bows to fucking no one, least of all the manager for the cutest girl in this damn bar.

“I’m full of surprises,” she says, and jams her finger down on the screen around Aubrey’s hand, having picked out the familiar single cover from the mess on the screen. The opening notes strain out of the speakers, and everyone kind of picks their heads up to look to the stage.

“This isn’t a duet,” Chloe says, leaning away from her mic.

“You shouldn’t be singing,” Aubrey says, but neither Chloe nor Beca pay her any attention.

“Trust me, Chlo,” Beca says, placing a hand on Chloe’s shoulder and squeezing. “Sing.”

Chloe smiles, even in confusion, and picks the mic up right on time.

“Oh, her eyes, her eyes make the stars look like they’re not shining, her hair, her hair, falls perfectly without her trying. She’s so beautiful, and I tell her every day,” Chloe sings, her voice higher than the original, and beautiful in this near stupid way. Beca kicks in, her head on autopilot, matching the songs together and watching Chloe’s face light up in revelation.

“Uh, uh, I was thinking about her, thinking about me, thinking about us, what we’re gon’ be, open my eyes, it was only just a dream,” Beca sings, and Chloe thankfully keeps singing underneath her higher voice, smiling. “It was only just a dream.”

“When I see your face,” Chloe starts, and Beca pulls across the lyric with the ones from her own song, and they mix so well that Beca’s surprised she’s only just pulled this one out of her ass. Chloe’s voice matches up well with her own, not that hers is very good in comparison. But Chloe’s face is the winner; it’s what keeps Beca mixing and matching through the song. She’s smiling so wide that Beca is certain some of her words sound a little accented. Beca finds herself smiling back.

When the song ends, it’s with the familiar sadness of a song she likes ending, but the dropoff is steep here – she takes a breath and looks over at Chloe one more time, and it seems like Chloe feels it too. Beca lets herself get cheered offstage, Chloe’s hand slowly finding her own again.

“Beca Mitchell, you can sing!” Stacie yells, wrapping Beca in a hug and twirling her around. “Jess, you never said she could sing!”

Jessica, who is watching Beca carefully, shrugs.

“She doesn’t usually,” she says, and the tone in which she says it makes Beca nervous. The grin that starts to break across Jessica’s face is even worse. God, she’s going to hear about a new, weird Chloe-crush contingency plan tomorrow.

“You sounded great, Becs,” Chloe says, bumping her shoulder and smiling softly. “You should sing.”

“I just make music,” Beca says, and shrugs in the face of everyone staring at her. She takes a long gulp of her drink, newly refilled. Thankfully, Aubrey, who now looks like she’s approaching furious, arrives into their circle.

“We should go,” she says, looking around the group. “You two have rehearsal tomorrow morning.”

“We don’t need to rehearse,” Beca says, rolling her eyes heavily. Aubrey doesn’t take well to that, but Stacie grabs ahold of her shoulders before she tears into Beca, or threatens her with barely contained fury. This seems to draw Aubrey’s attention sideways, or at least lessens her anger.

“You really should sing,” Chloe says, her voice right in Beca’s ear, soft and quiet in the loudness of the bar, amidst the pinging of pinball machines and shouting. Beca shivers, and shrugs, but accepts Chloe’s hand resting against her back as she turns to Jessica and Ashley and claims she could whip them at Tron.

-

Beca is surprised when someone knocks on her hotel room door at four a.m. They’re in Washington now, but she’s actually doing work, going over reports on possible new artists that her interns have submitted to her. At least half of them are the craziest shit she’s ever heard, but there are a few worth considering.

One of them, someone named Lilly, has a weird blend of beatboxing and whisper-singing that she’s currently trying to figure out if she likes a lot or not. But the knock on her door throws her out of the song, and she gets up from her desk to go check who it is.

She’s pretty sure Jessica is passed out, since she had fallen asleep on Ashley in the car ride from the show anyway. After that, there aren’t many people who she thinks would come to bother her, the supporting act.

The peephole reveals a dressed down Chloe Beale. Beca considers not opening the door; she and Chloe haven’t exactly had time to be in a contained space alone, ever, and Beca kind of likes that, since there was way less opportunity to embarrass herself by saying how fucking gorgeous she thought Chloe was that way.

Against her better judgment, she pulls the door open – and Chloe does look gorgeous. She’s wearing sweats, and a beanie that looks like it was bought straight off a touristy cart somewhere around the city, since it says D.C. in huge block letters.

“Hey,” Beca says, because that seems like a totally normal place to start. “What are you doing up?”

“I can’t ever get to sleep after a show,” Chloe says, shrugging. “Want to order room service and watch TV?”

“I was working,” Beca says, gesturing behind her toward her setup, where her big studio level headphones are set on her computer, along with copious notes in a notebook. The look of disappointment that comes over Chloe’s face is pretty unmistakable, and Beca is historically bad at reading anyone’s emotions. So she backtracks. “But I would kill for some pancakes.”

This prompts a smile out of Chloe, and Beca steps back to let her wander into Beca’s hotel room. She settles at the foot of Beca’s bed, reaching for the remote Beca hasn’t touched and flipping the television on.

“What are you working on?” Chloe asks, leaning sideways as if she could see onto Beca’s computer screen from the bed. She can’t, and so Beca pulls her computer from the desk to drop it on the bed next to Chloe, pressing play after unplugging her headphones.

“Picking new artists,” she says. “Tell me if you like this.”

“Oh, so now I’m your guinea pig?” Chloe asks, teasingly, but listens to Lilly’s weird-ass song anyway. This one has bird noises, but Beca had, on first listen, found it pretty endearing in its use of animal calls. Watching the biggest pop star in the world listening to a song featuring the sound of robins or whatever is pretty amusing.

“Well, it’s something,” Chloe says, then smiles. “I actually kind of like it?”

“That’s exactly how I feel,” Beca says. “But I don’t want my weirdo interns to get even weirder on me if I tell them to get a better demo from her.”

“Being weird isn’t so bad,” Chloe says, shrugging and looking down at Beca’s computer more clearly. “Is this where you keep all your secret DJ B-Mitch music?”

Beca reaches for the computer before Chloe can either break or find anything, flipping the lid shut. The other girl pouts at her, with big blue puppy dog eyes and an eventual crossing of arms.

“I don’t just play my secret mixes for just any girl,” Beca says, setting her computer back on the desk and looking over at the television. “Also, why do we have Ghost Whisperer on?”

“Everyone loves Ghost Whisperer at four in the morning, Beca,” Chloe says, kicking a foot out and jamming it at Beca’s knee. “That’s good to know, that you don’t go sharing with just anyone. I feel like we should get to know each other. I think we can be good friends!”

Beca stares at Chloe, who is now leaning toward the bedside table to grab the room service menu.

“You want to be friends with me?” Beca asks, and she tries to shake out the feeling that she sounds like a lonely thirteen year-old girl. But the feeling is fair – it’s like the most popular girl in school has proposed to work on a project with the least popular without any prior warning.

“Why wouldn’t I want to be friends with you?” Chloe asks, standing up and handing the menu to Beca, then just hovering sort of near her. Beca doesn’t feel like answering that, necessarily. There are a hundred reasons. “I picked you to come on a tour with me.”

“Okay, so you want to be friends. How do you do that?” she asks, then focuses on the menu, because she realizes she sounds like a damn idiot. “What do you want to eat?”

“A cheeseburger. And you get to know each other. Like, what’s your favorite color?” Chloe asks, nudging at Beca’s shoulder.

“Blue,” she says easily. “Do you want fries?”

“My favorite color is blue too!” Chloe says, and pokes Beca in the side of the head in celebration. “I want onion rings. When did you know you wanted to be a producer?”

“I don’t know,” Beca says, shrugging and writing down Chloe’s order and hers on a spare piece of paper so she can fiddle with the weird in-room computer ordering service. Damn fancy hotels. “Since I knew what one was, I guess. I was always good at making music.”

“You’re good at singing, too,” Chloe says, moving to the spare chair next to Beca’s desk and resting her feet up on the rail below Beca’s seat. “I always knew I was going to be a singer. I saw Britney Spears live when I was like seven, and I just knew I wanted to be that, you know?”

Beca, who is super busy jamming at the near-defective touchscreen of the room service page trying to add extra syrup onto her pancakes, looks over at Chloe. She has the typical dreamy look that artists get when they’re thinking about performing, the one she’s grown familiar with from watching them work for years now. It looks good on Chloe, though, not much looks bad on Chloe.

“My first concert was Third Eye Blind,” Beca says. “I conned my dad out of it, because he wanted me to be a flower girl in his wedding.”

Chloe cocks her head at Beca, but seems to accept the statement as is, leaning a little closer to Beca.

“My first concert was Faith Hill,” Chloe says, and Beca laughs, and reopens her computer. “Don’t laugh! She is a prolific artist, Beca, and I love her.”

Beca raises her finger at Chloe to indicate that she should wait, and she picks through her files on her hard drive to get to the one she’s looking for, labeled, “It Matters to Clay.” She clicks play, and Chloe’s half-angry, half-confused face slowly drifts into a smile as she listens to her own voice mashed up with Faith Hill’s.

“You knew that already,” Chloe says, her voice soft and whispery. Beca looks up from her computer where she was watching the file’s mixing.

“I didn’t read it in Tiger Beat or anything, if that’s what you mean,” Beca says, shrugging. “I just thought it worked.”

“It does,” Chloe says, smiling at her.

Chloe is looking at her strangely, and Beca’s heart feels like it beats double time. So she draws away, and jams her thumb into the ‘place order’ button on the computer.

“Your burger is on its way, madam,” she says, like a complete dork. Faith Hill and Chloe are still singing, and Chloe is still watching Beca. Ghost Whisperer-woman is still ghost whispering in the background.

“Thank God. Aubrey will be happy that I broke my sleep routine to order a burger at four am on a recovery day,” Chloe says, settling back in her seat and humming along to the mashup that’s wafting in the air between them. Beca flips through a couple of the papers on her desk before finally deciding to speak.

“She’s a bit of a tightwad,” Beca says, and Chloe lets out a shocked laugh.

“Well, I don’t know if it’s fair for the pot to call the kettle black,” Chloe says, smiling wider at Beca. “I had to come to your hotel room at four in the morning to make you be friends with me.”

“That hurts, Chloe,” Beca says, pouting. “And here I thought we were close.”

“We’ll get closer, I’m sure of it,” Chloe says, and it’s meant to be playful, maybe, but it doesn’t sound that way. “Now, show me how you do those mashups.”

So Beca does whatever Chloe Beale wants. Who cares?

-

“You’re where?” her dad asks, over the phone. She can barely hear him, because she’s, well -

“I’m at the Museum of Natural History,” Beca says, letting Chloe drag her from display to display while Beca talks to her father, who has made his weekly, perfunctory call. “It’s a blast.”

It isn’t a blast, and she says it in such a way that it is clear to both her father and Chloe that it is not, in fact, a fun thing. Both of them laugh at her, which is not an ideal synchronization. Around them, children are scurrying about, enjoying their summer off in what amounts to a free babysitter in the museum. Everything is sticky.

It’s awful.

“You hate history. And nature,” her dad says, still laughing a little bit. “Is Jessica there? I need to ask her if you’re acting okay.”

“Fuck off, dad,” Beca says, and an annoyed nanny and Chloe turn to look at her disapprovingly for cursing so near the children. Whatever, man. Who cares. Maybe she’ll get thrown out if she curses too much.

“Well, I was just checking in,” her dad says, still laughing at her, like a dick. “You’re safe and everything, I assume. I saw some video of your performance in Boston. You looked like you were having fun.”

“Yeah, well,” Beca starts, then gets abruptly tugged over to a display featuring a whale and a giant squid fighting it out. “It’s all an illusion.”

“Of course,” her dad says, kindly, like he gets that she isn’t going to make an out and out emotional statement about how she is having fun out on a tour (an admittedly much more gay than she had imagined first tour) with Chloe. “Text me if you need anything, or if your mood allows you to. Love you, Becs.”

“Yeah, me too,” Beca says, and then she shoves her phone down into her pocket, imagining her dad immediately calling Sheila into the room and exclaiming that Beca’s been forced into a museum by a girl. Oh God, what if he called her mom?

“Look at this!” Chloe exclaims, gesturing to the display they now find themselves in front of. It’s a peacock. Beca has no goddamn idea why it’s that exciting, but Chloe’s excitement at least provokes some interest in it to her. Kids are swarming around them, moving like a sea, but Beca centers as much focus as she can on the peacock.

“It’s a peacock,” is what she ends up with, and Chloe laughs, grabbing Beca by the arm and threading her own around it.

“You are not a fan of museums,” Chloe says, pulling Beca lightly through the crowds and being careful not to crush any small beings underfoot. Beca laughs, mostly in exasperation.

“I told you that when you woke me up at the crack of dawn to make me go,” Beca says, glaring heavily at a mother who runs her foot over with a stroller. Amazingly, the woman glares back just as annoyedly. “Aubrey and Stacie got to stay in. Why couldn’t I?”

“Everyone should go to the Smithsonian, Beca!” Chloe says as they exit the exhibition hall into the main lobby of the museum. She starts steering them in some new, infernal direction. Beca just lets her, and tries not to focus on the heat coming off Chloe’s body so close to hers.

“I’ve been to the Smithsonian,” Beca says, grumpily, just so Chloe knows she is still grumpy. Chloe is wearing a low slung baseball hat and has her hair up in some messy bun, and she looks stupidly beautiful for someone trying to draw little attention to herself. Beca is actually pretty grumpy about that.

“Well, you didn’t say that,” Chloe says airily, dodging people left and right. Beca slowly realizes they are getting drawn to the line leading into the 3D movie about dinosaurs that’s playing on the museum’s large screen.

“First of all, it was seven in the morning, after you had kept me up until six with an endless version of twenty questions. And second, I didn’t have a chance,” Beca says, glaring down at the smiling child who waves when they get in line next to her. Chloe waves back and cracks an enormous smile.

Chloe leans backwards, letting go of Beca finally, and observes Beca’s face as she looks around at anything but Chloe, simply because Chloe is really too distracting to look at for too long. Like the sun.

“When did you go the Smithsonian?” Chloe asks, conversationally. Beca looks on her in some confusion. “Friendship, Beca,” she reminds her and Beca sighs, looking out across the crowd before looking back at a smiling Chloe.

“I used to go a lot. My mom is a history professor and she’d come to D.C. for conferences. They’d have galas and stuff around the museums and I’d usually tag along,” Beca says. The line in front of them moves slowly, and so she doesn’t have a chance to cut off the conversation by moving or stepping away from it. She now wishes she had stayed on the phone a little longer with her dad, a first in her entire life.

“That sounds fun,” Chloe says, and of course Chloe thinks it sounds fun. She shits rainbows and has dreams about puppies.

“It was more lonely than anything,” Beca says, shrugging. “My dad stayed home and there weren’t a lot of other kids around.”

Chloe hums, acknowledging the information, before she bumps Beca’s shoulder heavily, smiling.

“You asked me how my mom died,” Chloe says, very gently, like Beca is about to cry or something. Beca startles, shaking her head vehemently.

“And I apologized like, twenty times,” Beca says. “And I’m still really sorry, so don’t - ”

“She died after a car crash,” Chloe says. “It’s how I got my scar.”

She points up at the little scar on her forehead. For half a second, Beca thinks she might touch it. But she reins herself in.

“Why are you telling me?”

“In friendship, in order to form close bonds, you share information that isn’t in Tiger Beat with each other,” Chloe says, nudging at Beca’s body and smiling.

“I don’t share very well,” Beca says, gripping the handrails that some kid halfway down the line is hanging off of like a jungle gym while his dad texts away.

“Well, you should,” Chloe says, matter-of-factly. “I am a good friend.”

“My parents got divorced when I was like, eight?” Beca offers, because that’s her biggest emotional trauma and she’s an idiot. “And then moved to opposite coasts of the U.S. It sucks to fly alone as an eight year-old.”

“I can’t imagine,” Chloe says, very sympathetically and kindly.

“Yeah, well,” Beca says, and then promptly realizes she has nothing else to say. “It’s whatever.”

Chloe seems to realize that Beca has hit an emotional limit, and nudges her again, smiling brightly.

“Well, now you’re here with me, so buck up,” Chloe says, and Beca laughs, nodding to affirm that she is, in fact, here with Chloe Beale, pop star, and all-around fucking nicest person on the planet.

“I’ll give it a whirl,” Beca says, and Chloe laughs too, then launches into a complicated story about her brother believing that dinosaurs were still alive until he was seven. Beca smiles the entire time.

-

Benji and Emily nearly tackle her when she strides into the bar they’ve gone to after getting to New York; but Emily’s hug lasts ten seconds before she realizes that Beca has walked into the bar towing a semi-incognito Chloe Beale. Originally, Jessica was going to come, but she and Ashley had decided to go on some publicist lunch somewhere in Chinatown. Chloe had been in earshot of Jessica’s declining, and then, all of a sudden, Beca was helping Chloe choose hats that obscured her red hair the best.

Chloe hadn’t had any, and so Beca had been forced to hand over her Seattle Mariners hat, a gift her step-dad had given her a couple years ago, as if that would provoke her to care about his dearly-loved Seattle sports teams.

Completing the incognito effort was a reasonably normal outfit that Beca still considered Chloe to be ridiculously beautiful in.

“Oh my God, Chlo - ” Emily starts, but Beca gives a quick shh and Emily gets the drift. “Hello, totally normal person!”

Beca lets go of Benji to watch Emily wrap Chloe in a tight hug that Chloe returns. The hug lasts long enough that she sits down and gets settled before they return to the normal world and not the overly-affectionate-touching one. Benji gives Chloe a quick hug too, and then Chloe’s body settles very near Beca’s in the booth, her leg bumping and then staying near her own.

“So, what’s good here?” Chloe asks, looking up to Benji and Emily. Benji shrugs and says something about nachos, but Beca and Emily are engaging in a staring contest that Beca is determined to win so that Emily will stop smiling.

“Oh, everything’s good,” Emily says, her eyes focused on Beca’s. Her smile is nearing demonic territory. “Beca, have you talked to Jesse today? I was going to call him later and I was thinking maybe we could do it together.”

Beca glares at Emily.

“I talked to him this morning,” Beca says, which is a lie of epic proportions. She hasn’t talked to him in three days. But this is about her dignity, and her friends not meddling in or treating her crush on Chloe Beale as a sport by which they entertain themselves.

“Beca, I woke you up an hour ago,” Chloe says, nudging at Beca and laughing. Emily bursts into hysterical laughter, and Benji pats her on the shoulder lovingly, as is his fashion for most everything.

“Legacy, chill,” Beca finally mutters, kicking the girl under the table.

“Legacy?” Chloe asks, as Beca raises her hand to get the waitress’s attention so she can order and drown herself in alcohol before Emily Junk starts crafting wedding plans right in front of her.

“Because my mom is a famous person,” Emily says, shrugging and sipping her drink. “It’s a joke nickname that kind of stuck.”

“How is your mom?” Chloe asks, actually looking interested. Beca orders a weird craft beer at random, and then asks for a screwdriver for Chloe while Emily chatters on about Mrs. Junk and her Wingnuts. Apparently, one of the kids was trying to start a singing career and also sounded like dying cats.

“Oh, I meant to tell you, Beca,” Emily says. “Legal sent a contract to Jessica about production on the album.”

“She’s too busy gallivanting right now to tell me these things,” Beca says with a sigh. Chloe giggles, accepting her screwdriver from the waitress with a smile and a ‘thank you.’ The waitress does a bit of a double take, but she keeps moving after Beca half-glares at her. Chloe doesn’t seem to notice, sipping her drink and happily bumping her knee into Beca’s at a rhythm Beca can’t quite catch.

“You’re already starting on a new album?” Chloe asks, and Emily nods, her eyes once again flying to Beca’s and flicking back and forth between Beca and the screwdriver in Chloe’s hands. Beca literally doesn’t know what that means.

“The songs are so good,” Benji says, leaning forward and talking in his excited way. “At least, what I’ve read of them. It’ll be even better than the last one.”

“I mean, with me producing…” Beca says, shrugging nonchalantly. Chloe laughs, which is the intended effect, really. It’s interrupted when her phone begins to ring. Beca looks down to see that it’s Aubrey, and she just nods when Chloe looks at her apologetically and steps away, toward the restrooms to answer.

Chloe hasn’t made it more than six feet away when Emily leans forward.

“I do not care what you are about to say to me,” Beca says preemptively, but Emily practically talks over her.

“Oh my God, Beca, you brought Chloe Beale to meet us,” she says, so excited that she’s nearly hyperventilating. “You ordered a drink for her!”

“Just because I know her drink order does not mean…anything. It means nothing,” Beca says, taking a huge gulp of her drink and looking away from Emily and half-watching Chloe talk on the phone. She’s smiling in that Aubrey-appeasing way, one hand tucked into her pocket.

“She’s wearing your lucky hat,” Benji says, dropping into the conversation. She glares at him so swiftly that he leans back again, taking a long drink of his water.

“That is just so she doesn’t get recognized,” Beca says, rolling her eyes. “You need to chill, Em.”

“Beca, as Jesse would say, your toner is visible from space,” Emily says, whispering across the table and wincing at the use of the objectionable term. “And she’s here. She likes you too!”

“Oh my God, no she doesn’t,” Beca says, smacking Emily’s hand on the table from encroaching onto her half of the space. “Do not say toner ever again. Jesse needs to stop hanging out with his orchestra members, those weirdos.”

"Beca,” Emily says, in this tone of voice that implies that Beca should reconsider her life and her choices. She is having none of it, because she is not going to listen to someone three years younger than her even though she has a far more stable life and relationship. Chloe starts to head back toward the table, and Beca shuts whatever additional shit Emily is about to start spewing down with a wave of her hand.

“Sorry about that, guys,” Chloe says, sliding back into the booth and lightly bumping her shoulder up against Beca’s. “Aubrey was just calling to ask where I went, since we kind of snuck off.”

“Oh, she must have been thrilled,” Beca says wryly, taking another drink of her beer to keep herself focused on things other than Chloe’s closeness to her, how her shoulder is now just resting up against hers. She focuses on the ridiculous smile on Emily’s dumb face.

“So, how is Beca as a tourmate?” Emily asks, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Jesse once went on a road trip with her to get to Yellowstone and he said it was the worst.”

“That’s because he wanted to listen to every single Batman movie soundtrack in order and I wouldn’t let him,” Beca mutters. Chloe bumps her shoulder with a smile, but answers Emily’s question.

“It’s been great! It’s really fun to have another artist around, and Beca and I get along really well,” Chloe says, bumping Beca again. Emily’s face takes on some maniacal level of joy. “I was thinking, we should perform that mashup you sang at karaoke.”

“Oh my God, I missed a Beca karaoke moment?” Emily asks, now looking devastated. She’s really working through her emotions right now. Beca sighs, tapping the table a little to the beat of the song playing overhead.

“I don’t sing,” Beca says. “And I doubt Columbia or Aubrey would be pumped to hear that suggestion.”

“I’m so upset, did anyone film it?” Emily asks, interjecting on Beca’s denial. “Beca karaoke moments are the best!”

“Columbia would be fine with it, and Aubrey would deal with it. You’re great, and she knows that,” Chloe says, very seriously, before turning to Emily with a quick turn in mood. “She’s so good, right? Can you please tell her to perform a song with me on tour?”

“Can everyone please chill?” Beca whispers, but both of them seem to ignore her.

“Wait, you guys sang together? You never sing with anyone! Oh my God, this is the worst day of my life,” Emily says, despairingly placing one hand over her eyes. Beca rolls her own, because she’s just surrounded by idiots.

“Well, there was the time she made Jesse cry on a duet,” Benji offers, but Beca is semi-grateful because he draws Emily and Chloe’s attention away from her non-existent singing talent. “I like your hat, Chloe.”

Chloe grins as though she’s been told that she is the best person on planet Earth, touching the bill of the hat with one hand and the other sliding beneath the table to actually touch Beca on her thigh. She’s happy that they aren’t at the bar on stools, because she’d fall flat on her ass. Thankfully, there’s a wall up against her side, away from Chloe, which she utilizes for its strength to hold her up in this time of great need.

“Thank you,” Chloe says, and the smile on her face, mixing with the blue of her eyes and the red of hair flowing out beneath the dark navy lucky hat that she’s wearing, makes her look fucking beautiful.

-

“Where are we going again?” Chloe asks, turning to look at Beca with some type of puppy eyes. Beca glares ahead of her, into the headrest of the driver. She will not be tricked into revealing surprises just because Chloe Beale makes faces at her.

“Can’t you just let me be a good friend and surprise you?” Beca asks, and Chloe looks like she might apologize for half a second. It drifts away as she looks out the window, searching for clues.

“You’re taking me out on a friend date,” Chloe says, and Beca frowns at even the mention of the word date. Jessica had said the same thing earlier today, when Beca suggested this adventure for the two of them. Ashley had something about how it was important for the talent on a tour to bond. Thankfully, Aubrey hadn’t been there. And when Beca had mentioned it to Emily over lunch, she had burst into tears.

“I don’t know what that is,” Beca says, carefully, watching the driver pull up to the corner she had directed him to. She pops open her door, as Chloe excitedly does the same.

“It’s an outing between two friends,” Chloe says, waving thank you to their driver as he starts to pull away. “You’ve come very far in your friendshipping.”

“Don’t...no one calls it friendshipping,” Beca says, starting to walk down the street towards their eventual destination. Chloe seems to notice where they are, squealing loud enough that a few people look at her curiously.

“Are you taking me to see a musical?” Chloe asks, furiously grabbing for Beca’s hand and also jumping up and down like a crazy person.

“Dude, can you chill? I promised Ashley that you wouldn’t have to sign twenty autographs,” Beca says, trying to pull Chloe out of the clouds.

“You’re taking me to see The Phantom of the Opera,” Chloe says, pulling Beca into a hug that she really does not need to be a part of. It’s too tight and Chloe is too warm. She tries to worm her way out of it, but Chloe clings tighter, so Beca decides to just start walking towards the theatre, complete with Chloe hanging off her.

It seems to have the effect of people not wanting to look at them, which is very helpful when it comes to preventing Chloe from having to sign autographs.

“I don’t know why this is so crazy,” Beca says, sighing. “My parents made me watch musical theatre all the time. They sent me to a camp for it.”

“Beca Mitchell went to musical theatre camp,” Chloe says, drawing away and staring at Beca with wide eyes. “I don’t know if I can live with that imagery.”

“It wasn’t by choice! It was during the summer my parents got divorced,” Beca says, shrugging. Chloe starts hugging her again, which is awkward, because Beca has to try to hold the door to the theatre.

“No one’s ever taken me to a show before,” Chloe says, right into Beca’s neck, while Beca is trying to shake Chloe off so she can hand the nice woman in front of them the tickets she had bought this morning. Chloe lets go just in time for the woman to recognize her, of course, and she smiles wildly.

Chloe smiles back, as she is wont to do.

“Why have you never been to a show before? I thought Phantom was one of those things everyone got forced by their parents to watch,” Beca says, trying to walk past a clump of stupid people gathered around the souvenir booth. Chloe, of course, grabs at her arm to force her to linger.

“Well, by the time I was old enough to see it, my dad was alone and working all the time,” Chloe says, shrugging. It doesn’t seem like it bothers her, but Beca still winces. “And now I’m working all the time. No one’s ever thought...to take me, I guess.”

“Even your...significant others?” Beca asks, unbidden, and kind of stupidly. Chloe glances at her, and her eyes are much more serious than Beca could have anticipated or expected. It’s an intense thing, looking at Chloe’s blue, blue eyes, wrapped up suddenly in this weird moment. Thankfully, Chloe blinks first, turning back to the table of weird bits and bobs and t-shirts in front of them. She has her hand on one of the cheap plastic Phantom masks before Beca can blink away the heat in her eyes.

“For you,” Chloe says, holding it straight up to Beca’s face. All she can feel is Chloe’s fingers brushing against her skin, and Chloe’s eyes on her face, half behind a mask.

-

“Beca,” Aubrey says, as Stacie and Ashley shuffle around her. “You left your ridiculously heavy bag in the lobby.”

Aubrey is, very helpfully, holding Beca’s precious bag aloft in the confined area of the private jet. Beca shrieks - an uncommon noise coming from her that she doesn’t feel like pretending didn’t happen. She had just been shoving her bag into the overhead, realizing that she was missing something.

“Oh my God, thank you,” Beca says, ripping it from Aubrey’s hand and flipping it open to make sure that her laptop is still, in fact, there, along with all of the hard drives.

“You should keep better watch of your things,” Aubrey says, as though she is disciplining a child. “My father always said that if you lose something, let it go, and accept your failures.”

“Have you heard that one before?” Ashley asks Stacie, who laughs and pushes at Aubrey until she sits down in one of the seats. Beca retreats back to her seat, next to Chloe in the back of the plane, while Jessica watches her with amusement.

“I’m glad we didn’t have to deal with another panic attack,” Jessica says, a sleep mask halfway up her forehead. She looks conspiratorially over at Chloe. “The last time she left that bag somewhere I had to take her to the hospital.”

“Jesse took me to the hospital,” Beca says, sitting in the seat and stretching out her feet. She’s never got to sit in this chair - the one next to Chloe, the nice one, before. But she had been coerced into it, getting forced into Chloe’s car to the airport by Chloe’s excited smile and a forceful hand on her arm.

She had apparently been so distracted that she left her most precious possession in the hotel lobby.

“Jesse was the one who made sure you didn’t puke in the backseat. I drove,” Jessica says. “So technically, I took you to the hospital.”

“Why’d you freak out?” Chloe asks, as Beca reaches for one of the bottles of water supplied to the VIPs on the plane. Technically, she was the talent, right?

“Beca’s world is organized and relies on as little pressure as possible being placed on her,” Jessica says, slipping her sleep mask on as the door closes up and Beca flips her off. “She lost her laptop right before opening night at 52.”

“What’s 52?” Chloe asks, turning to look at Beca full-on in the chair, buckling her own seat belt just as Aubrey reminds everyone to do so.

“52 Stack,” Beca says, fumbling with her seatbelt briefly. “It’s a club owned by our friend. I’m the Friday night DJ.”

“Stacie, have you been to 52 Stack?” Chloe asks, and Stacie practically launches out of her seat just as the plane starts rolling around on the tarmac towards a runway.

“Oh, I love the Stack,” Stacie says, swatting at Aubrey’s hands as the other woman tries to force her into her seat. “Little DJ B here is better at Aquatiq though.”

“You think so?” Jessica asks, reentering the conversation after flipping up her eyemask. “I’ve had people tell me that before.”

“Why do you never tell me anything?” Beca asks, looking at Jessica and glaring. The girl rolls her eyes, while Stacie seems to think over her response.

“I think it’s the crowd. And the darker mixes. Less clubby,” Stacie says. “Maybe...sensual?”

“Are you building a word collage?” Aubrey asks, tugging at Stacie’s arm again. “Beca is very good at both clubs, and is in fact, a good DJ everywhere. Problem solved, safety is now paramount.”

Stacie sinks into her seat with a wink at Beca and Chloe, while the plane seems to line up finally with a runway. Jessica pulls on her eyemask again. Ashley already seems absorbed in her book, headphones on. Beca listens to the pilot’s brief message that they’re about to take off, and looks out the window, past Chloe’s body.

“Do you still not like flying?” Chloe asks, touching Beca’s arm as they start to pick up speed down the runway. Beca shrugs, settling back into her seat. It gets louder around them, but Chloe leans closer. “Want to watch Grease? I have it on my laptop.”

Beca laughs.

“Who told you I liked musical theater?” she asks, because, friends don’t lie and pretend that they don’t like things. Maybe. She’s still figuring out how to be Chloe Beale’s friend.

“Benji,” Chloe says, smiling at Beca as the plane starts to lift off. She doesn’t notice it immediately, but somewhere halfway through the opening number of the movie, she realizes Chloe’s hand is still on her arm.

-

“Oh my God, Beca Mitchell,” a person practically yells in her ear. Next to her, Chloe looks up and quickly looks down again, sorting through records and avoiding the overexcited girl next to Beca. It doesn’t happen that often, but when Beca gets recognized, it’s almost always by some overexcited girl in a leather jacket with a short, James Dean-esque haircut.

The rest of the people in the record store glance up as well, and Beca laughs nervously as many of them go back to their records. A few seem to take notice, clearly deciding between drifting closer or minding their own business.

They’ve only just arrived in Chicago, and Chloe has coaxed Beca out of their cushy hotel and onto the streets with promises of pizza and an art museum (Beca had been fine with pizza). Aubrey had cautioned them for half a second before she had yawned for a solid ten seconds, and then told Chloe not to sing anywhere.

And so everyone else had tapped out, heading off to their rooms and sleeping. Chloe, who seemed to have the sleep-wake system of an elephant, had been perfectly happy to reintroduce herself to the city.

“Um, hi,” Beca says, and the girl looks like she could pass out from excitement. All of a sudden, another girl in a jean jacket with a whole bunch of patches on it appears next to her.

“Oh my God, you’re Beca Mitchell,” the new one says, and Beca refrains from rolling her eyes. How did this girl not hear her girlfriend scream at the top of her lungs upon seeing Beca next to her?

“I love your music so much,” the first girl says, gripping her girlfriend’s hand now for dear life. “Everything. All the records you’ve produced, even at Residual. Oh my God, you look so cool.”

Beca looks down at her outfit, which consists of jean shorts, converse, and her tour shirt, which is literally just Chloe’s face with a rainbow extending over it. God, of course. Beca hears Chloe behind her try to stifle a laugh as a cough.

“Thanks,” Beca says. “Nice to meet you.”

“My name is Keenan, and this is my girlfriend, Sarah,” the girl says, and then gasps. “Oh my God, you’re here with Chloe Beale, right? We’re going to your concert on Friday!”

“Oh, cool,” Beca says, then shrugs. “Technically, though, it’s her concert. I’m just the DJ.”

Chloe nearly breaks her facade again, coughing louder behind Beca. Keenan actually frowns so deeply that Beca’s concerned that she hates Chloe and is about to rail against her. Sarah saves her girlfriend though.

“Oh, I’ve seen the costumes,” Sarah says. “I’m fine with seeing her.”

It’s pretty clearly lascivious, and Beca is more than a little uncomfortable with it for many uncomfortable moments. Keenan frowns now at her girlfriend, for what could be any number of conceivable reasons. Beca is now ready to get out of this record shop, no matter if the museum isn’t open yet or not.

“Um, would you like a picture?” Beca asks, because that’s what seems like the right thing to offer. Keenan seems like she could pass out at any moment, but nods shakily. Sarah starts fumbling her phone out of her pocket, looking around for someone to take a picture, and finally, Chloe steps out from behind Beca and offers a hand out.

She’s wearing Beca’s hat again, with her hair up in a bun. It’s not immediately obvious how red it is, which was probably the point - but Beca is certain for a moment that Chloe has just out and out revealed herself. How that could get out, Beca has no idea, but the way Aubrey and Ashley obsessed over Chloe’s Twitter mentions kind of terrified her.

The girls don’t seem to notice, which is amazing. Beca moves to ingratiate herself between Keenan and Sarah, because she at least has had enough practice to know how group photos work. Chloe prompts them to smile, and Beca does, and then it’s over.

“Did you want to buy anything?” Chloe asks her, handing over the phone to Sarah and smiling happily. Beca tries to contain her smile back, but she isn’t sure she succeeds.

“No, I don’t think so,” Beca says back, and she is promptly interrupted by a frantic gasp from Sarah, who is looking at Chloe in absolute shock. Chloe giggles, and presses a lone finger up to her lips before grabbing at Beca and pulling her through the shop and towards the door.

The last thing Beca hears is Sarah say, “Oh my God, I objectified her in front of her,” before she’s out the door and onto the busy streets of Chicago. Chloe seems to pick an arbitrary direction, looping her arm through Beca’s and steering them past dudes in suits and dogwalkers.

“Do you just go around scaring your fans like that?” Beca asks, laughing and attempting to ignore Chloe’s hand and body being near her. It’s kind of thrilling.

“I don’t know, are you usually that awkward around yours?” Chloe returns, smiling, and sliding her sunglasses onto her face. Beca wishes she had brought hers, because then she could at least feel like her eyes were shielded from Chloe’s insane beauty even when she’s fresh off a plane and wearing a grungy hat. “All they do is love you, Becs.”

“I’m not awkward,” Beca denies, a claim she would not be comfortable making uncontested with anyone who knows her. Chloe seems to take it that way as well, pulling Beca into a half-hug on a street corner and laughing at her.

It’s all pretty rude.

“That girl, Keenan was pretty into you,” Chloe says, right in Beca’s ear, really softly, and it makes Beca shiver just a tiny, little bit.

“Yeah, well,” Beca says, like she has any idea what words she has in her vocabulary that would match anything Chloe Beale has to whisper in her ear. “She isn’t my type.”

“What is your type?” Chloe asks, pulling Beca into the street with her mouth thankfully not near Beca’s ear. Beca considers pretending to not hear the question and point out the popcorn shop in front of them as means to a distraction.

“I don’t really have one,” Beca says, shrugging, trying to be cool. “It’s all about her personality.”

“Oh, her,” Chloe says, nudging at Beca and making Beca squirm away. They’ve thankfully managed to cross the street without Beca staring at Chloe until she was crushed by a car.

“Yeah, I’m on the gayest tour of all time with you,” Beca says, deciding to poke Chloe in the side, because Chloe won’t stop poking her in the side and that’s just, distracting. Chloe squeals pretty loudly, and then giggles. It’s awful and Beca half wishes she had heeded Jessica’s advice to take a nap first before heading out. “You hadn’t noticed?”

“I have noticed that you like to stare at my ass right before your set is over,” Chloe says breezily, smiling like she has literally murdered people and got away with it, which isn’t too far from the truth at this point.

“That’s not a thing,” Beca says, taking the high road. She won’t put up with being slandered this way.

“Sure,” Chloe says, grabbing for Beca’s hand. Beca yanks it away just as quickly, because she won’t take being patronized, even if she thinks Chloe is probably heaven’s gift to earth or whatever. Chloe doesn’t even seem to miss a beat. “I just wasn’t sure if you were out or not. I didn’t want to just go after you or anything.”

Beca tilts her head to the side, because of course Chloe somehow finds a way to be nice about it.

“Aubrey says you are out but you aren’t out out, which is totally fine, and great, but I was just...wondering,” Chloe says, continuing on. She even seems a little nervous, which makes Beca very nervous.

“Yeah, no,” Beca says, then stops herself before she says some succession of those same two words over and over. “I...am out in like my personal life. Just not...publicly.”

“That’s okay,” Chloe says, clearly afraid that she’s done something wrong. She grabs again for Beca’s hand, grasping it and squeezing it. Beca tries to remember to breathe.

“I know it’s okay,” Beca says, and then sighs, because she sounds like a dick, and she feels like she might start hyperventilating, which is always bad. “Sorry. I just...know you are pretty out there. I’m pretty bad at talking about shit like this.”

“I knew you were looking at my butt,” Chloe says, very triumphantly, and exceedingly annoying to boot. “Aubrey said to leave it alone!”

Beca is concerned, as Chloe starts dragging her down the street by the hand, that she thinks Chloe should have listened to Aubrey.


	3. A Little Bit Scandalous, but Baby Don't Let them See It

San Francisco brings a number of things into Beca’s life; one of them is Jesse Swanson, claiming he’s bought tickets to see her and Chloe and has also bought a “fuckton of rainbow shit for the parade,” with a suitcase at her hotel room door. How he managed to find her hotel room is really beyond her, and why he doesn’t have his own is really beyond her. One of them she can at least fix, and she calls the front desk only to find that all rooms are booked thanks to, you know, the biggest pride festival in the world.

So she asks for a trundle bed, while Jesse pouts.

The other thing that San Francisco brings her is the image of Chloe Beale in a bikini, barging into Beca’s hotel room asking if it’s too tight.

Beca doesn’t really know what qualifies a bikini as too tight, but Jesse falls out of the desk chair from where he’s been fiddling with string noises on his computer, and Beca drops the water bottle she has halfway up to her mouth at the interruption. Chloe stops short, regarding Jesse and the bag of clothes he’s brought, not seeming to pay any attention to her current state of relative undress.

“Hello,” Chloe says, curiously, looking down at Jesse on the ground. He recovers quickly, bouncing up onto his feet and waving at her.

“Hey, I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Jesse,” he says, and then looks over at Beca with the kind of face that means that Beca is literally never going to get to sleep because of his rampant boy-gossip about her love life. She rolls her eyes at him and waves him off.

“Jesse is supporting our tour or annoying the shit out of me, depending on how you look at it,” Beca says, trying to not look at Chloe. It’s hard, because the bikini is small and also like, bright green, and it looks so good. She coughs a little. “Um, so the bikini is too tight?”

“I was just wondering what you thought,” Chloe says, and her voice is so something that Jesse jumps out of his chair with his computer and says he’s going to get coffee – coffee he does not even drink - and that he has to call his conductor and then he has to call his mom. Beca waves goodbye, and Chloe steps out of the way with an amused expression on his face.

“He’s not used to pretty girls,” Beca says, after the door has mercifully shut. Chloe smiles, shuffling closer in her tiny green bikini. Beca very, very carefully sets her computer to the side so she can’t somehow break it on her lap.

“I thought you said you knew him since college?” Chloe says, her smile big. Beca rolls her eyes, and then braves another look at the bikini.

“Yeah, I never looked that good in a bikini. I don’t think it’s too small,” Beca says, then covers her eyes. “Now, please put some clothes on, I think Aubrey would sue me for having seen this much of your body without signing a NDA.”

Beca doesn’t hear an answer behind her covered eyes, at least, she doesn’t hear one until it’s very close to her.

“Becs, you’d have to see a bit more of me to have to sign a NDA,” Chloe says, laughing, but in a tone of voice that does not sound funny. It sounds seductive, and kind of like Beca Mitchell’s fucking death. Hands appear on top of her hands, and she tries to keep her eyes covered, but Chloe starts to wrench them off of her eyelids. She gets half a glance of the expanse of Chloe’s stomach and resolves to fight off her death as much as possible, clenching her eyes shut.

“You shouldn’t resist, or else I will take all my clothes off to the tune of one of my lady jams,” Chloe says, and Beca tries to hold back the shiver that runs through her, but she’s sure Chloe notices. She gives up, opening her eyes to find Chloe has settled just in front of her on the bed, picking up Beca’s old album sweatshirt from Snoop and having it halfway over her head before Beca has time to protest.

Not that she would have protested. But she might have thought about it.

“Please, I think my lady jams would be way more effective as strip tease songs,” Beca says, kicking one foot out in front of her to scoot up into the headboard, away from now-just-pants-less Chloe Beale.

“Does Jesse know your lady jams?” Chloe asks, and it is maybe meant to sound playful, but Beca has half a mind to read it as something like jealousy. Beca cocks her head to the side to look at Chloe, who’s hair is flowing over Beca’s sweatshirt, which features Snoop dressed as Santa flipping the bird while riding a sleigh.

“He doesn’t,” she finally says, shrugging and turning back to her computer. “I don’t just share them with everyone, like some people.”

“I don’t share mine with everyone,” Chloe says, shrugging in return and nudging at Beca’s ankle with a lightly-curled fist. When Beca looks up, Chloe’s expression is open and lovely, a hint of a smile creeping up, her eyes bright. “What’s one song that reminds you of me?”

““Stockholm Syndrome” by One Direction,” Beca says, deadpan. Chloe laughs, wrapping her hand around Beca’s ankle and squeezing there, gently.

“A, that is a great song and you shouldn’t make fun of it. B, seriously. I know at least one for you.”

“As long as yours isn’t a lady jam, I’m happy to hear it,” Beca retorts, laughing when Chloe sticks her tongue out at her and squeezes her ankle a little harder. “Fine. Uh… the RAC remix of “Say My Name” by Odesza. 2014.”

“Very specific,” Chloe says, then looks over to Beca’s computer. “Play it for me.”

“You’re bossy,” Beca says, and no, she is not going to play that song for Chloe. That would never, ever happen.

“I mean, I have won a Grammy and sold out a major arena tour recently,” Chloe says, fluffing her hair in a pantomime of some sort of starlet character. Beca laughs, kicking lightly at Chloe’s side where her hand is still wrapped around Beca’s ankle.

“What song reminds you of me?” Beca asks. Chloe shakes her head stubbornly. And normally Beca wouldn’t fucking care, but she does care. She cares more than she has in a while. So she compromises. “If you tell me, I’ll play the song for you. My song, I mean.”

Chloe seems to consider this, eyeing Beca warily with one heavily squinted eye. It makes Beca laugh, the comical expression. But she seems to decide, letting go of Beca’s ankle, leaving coldness in its wake just before she speaks.

““Slow Show,” by the National,” Chloe offers, and Beca can hear the song immediately in her head. She knows it nearly backwards and forwards, actually. It’s not the choice she would have imagined, but as she thinks over the lyrics (I want to hurry home to you, put on a slowed down show for you), she tries not to obsess like she wants to.

God, she feels like a middle schooler getting her first mix tape.

“I worked on an album with them,” Beca says, instead of anything else that pops into her head. Chloe laughs softly, picking at the blanket beneath her legs a little bit.

“I know that,” Chloe says, looking Beca in the eye. It’s a piercing gaze, more serious than she’s ever seen it before. “When I heard the Fjords album for the first time, I looked you up to see what else you had done.”

Beca doesn’t know what to say to that. It means something, of course, what Chloe’s saying, and Beca’s never been good at saying things. So she reaches over to her computer, and pulls up her song.

“I wanna go, so what’d you say, when you gonna let me know if you give a damn about me? ‘Cause you got my hands tied. In my defense, I always fall for confidence, and your compliments look good on me,” the music sings, and Chloe’s face focuses in on the lyrics immediately, which is kind of the opposite of what Beca had hoped, and also kind of exactly what she had hoped. It was a confusing time.

Chloe looks up at Beca, and Beca watches Chloe listen to the song, watches Chloe start to bob her head to the song, watches her whole body pick up the rhythm and melody of the song. She doesn’t turn the music up, but it feels like it gets louder, like it wraps them up in the familiar beats.

Of course, then Jessica is beating down her door, asking something about if she knows her ex-boyfriend is wearing a rainbow headband in the lobby.

“He doesn’t even like coffee, I thought?” Jessica asks, and then she seems to notice that Chloe is there, now looking down at the bed between them. Beca is staring at Jessica in pure horror and anger, probably. She smacks her computer closed, and Chloe gets off the bed, saying something about a costume fitting. She wants to protest, is about to, looking up at pantsless (Jesus Christ) Chloe Beale, but Chloe just smiles at Beca and presses a kiss to her cheek before brushing past Jessica and out the door.

Jessica stares at her while Beca kind of stares at Jessica in total wonder.

“I’m going to go work on some media plans now,” Jessica says. “Serious ones. Actually likely to be used ones.”

“Motherfucker,” Beca says, and she touches her hand to her cheek while Jessica hurries out of the room.

-

About thirty hours later, they’ve performed, and partied their hearts out on the gayest night of the year in the gayest place in the world.

“Wait, wait,” Jesse says, leaning across Beca’s body to look at Chloe very seriously. They’re all pretty drunk, she’s pretty sure, because Chloe has folded her body tightly up against Beca’s side and it’s so warm that Beca is convinced she might fall asleep right now. It is also like, three in the morning after their midday show. San Francisco is still going though, now night-bright fabulous. “Wait.”

“We’re all waiting, you fuckhead,” Beca says, and Chloe lightly slaps her on the thigh in reprimand. Across the limo, Aubrey is singing lightly along to the radio practically in Stacie’s face, not paying attention for once to Chloe. On the side wall, Jessica and Ashley are playing what looks like pattycake.

“You were in college a cappella?” Jesse asks, poking at Chloe and laughing at her. She giggles, pulling her body even tighter to Beca to evade his ridiculous poking. Beca smacks his hand away.

“We were the best in the southeast conference, Jesse Swanson,” Aubrey says, pulling out of Stacie’s atmosphere to look sternly at Jesse. He doesn’t look very chastised, which Beca enjoys about him.

“Dude, a cappella kids were such weirdos!” Jesse says, and Jessica laughs, now paying some attention to what’s happening. Ashley looks a little put-out, which is like, something Beca can focus on when she’s sober and Chloe Beale hasn’t put a hand up against her hip bone, tapping out a beat.

“Jesse, you wanted to join the a cappella groups,” she says, pointing at him accusingly. He rolls his eyes, and then starts singing, as he is wont to do whenever he is reminded of his modicum of singing talent. Next to Beca, Chloe picks her head up and looks at him as he sings his way (kind of, with a lot of glossed over words) through “Cryin’” by Aerosmith.

“Stop that,” Beca says, hitting him on the side of the head just as the limo pulls up to their hotel. Aubrey and Stacie get out first, and Beca can see the distinctive burst of light that comes with the paparazzi – the sight of the flash has become somewhat familiar to her by now, since it seems to follow Chloe around, but it’s the first time she’s been snared up too. Jessica seems to drunkenly catch on that she should be doing publicist things and gestures at Beca to scoot toward Jesse. She does, as Chloe gets out of the car. Jessica and Ashley climb out next, and Beca follows after.

It’s kind of a clusterfuck. Jesse grabs ahold of the back of her shirt almost immediately at all the shouting, once he stumbles out of the limo. All around them, people are asking questions of Chloe, about who she’s with and whether she’s sad about Tom – whoever the fuck Tom is, and is she dating someone on the Mariners?

Beca swings her head around when someone manages to yell her name, asking if she and Chloe are together. The question seems to zero the world down to whoever asked it, and Beca’s definitely drunk, because she feels like she can’t focus enough to get to the door of their hotel, not with that question out there in the world. It’s obviously a leap, she knows that it’s a leap, and that the man is trying to gather any sort of reaction from her or Chloe, and probably just Chloe.

What saves her is Jesse grabbing ahold of her hand and shielding her body from most of the flashes, along the right side of the walkway, forcing her along until they’re past the door and around the corner. It’s much quieter in the hotel as someone rushes over to Aubrey and Ashley to start apologizing profusely, both of them not taking the apologies very well. Jessica is hovering halfway between Beca and the elevators, but she starts to falter back once Stacie presses the button to call them, with her arms crossed.

“Beca,” Jessica says, and Beca is kind of having a time. It feels like there are still lights in her eyes, and she can still hear people shouting, mixing up with the what-feels-like absurdly loud saxophone music playing in the lobby of the hotel. Jesse’s hand in hers is just about the only thing giving her any sense of calm, and she squeezes it hard. Jessica starts to come closer and closer. “Beca, are you okay?”

“Becs, hey,” Jesse whispers, tugging at her hand and trying to draw her attention off of whatever drunken spiral she’s going through. “Hey, look at me.”

His face is familiar, and soft, but there’s a bit of a clamor outside as a doorman goes out to try to shoo the photographers away. Aubrey’s voice rises over that noise, and Beca kind of feels like she might puke in the middle of the lobby of the nicest hotel in San Francisco.

“Beca,” Chloe says, appearing suddenly right on her other side, opposite of Jesse. Her touch is surprising, but the same kind of calming as Jesse’s. Her voice is so soft and quiet, like she’s been screaming all night and day. It sounds so sweet. “Hey, babe, come over here, the elevator is coming.”

She lets herself get led over to the elevator bank, away from the scene Aubrey, Ashley, and now Jessica are causing. Stacie jams her thumb even harder at the up button on sight of Beca, and sighs heavily.

“What the fuck?” Jesse finally asks, but what he’s asking about is kind of a mystery. He allows Beca to slide away from his grip and into the marble walls of the elevator bank, the coolness of its walls comforting her warm cheeks. Chloe follows her though, gripping at her hand.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Stacie says, glaring over at the hotel managers talking with their handlers. “If we had known, we probably would have tried to take off your face paint and Chloe’s hat.”

“I like my hat,” Chloe says, tugging it lower over her eyes as if to prove that she does, in fact, like her hat. Jesse simultaneously says he likes his face paint. Beca just leans against the wall, shifting her face a little to get to another cool spot, starting to pay more attention to the humming sound Chloe is making.

The elevator finally arrives, and Stacie doesn’t wait for the other three, making sure Chloe gets in before she even moves. The ride feels long, up to the upper floors of the building. They stop a couple times, but she just keeps her eyes closed and holds Chloe’s hand until she’s being forced to move.

When she opens her eyes, there’s no one in the elevator but her and Chloe, and they’re stepping out of onto the top floor of the hotel, into the Presidential suite. It’s, of course, gorgeous. The skyline of San Francisco is lit up all around them, and Beca can make out the Golden Gate bridge on one side of the huge suite.

“This isn’t my room,” Beca mutters, and Chloe laughs, musically and perfectly, as Chloe is wont to do. Chloe leads her further into the room, setting her down on one of the like, four sitting areas.

“It isn’t,” Chloe says, then moves over to one of the open suitcases. “Let me get you something to sleep in.”

“I’m sleeping with you?” Beca asks, and frowns at herself for how idiotic that sounded. Chloe laughs, again. Beca feels a lot less drunk, and a lot less stunned now that she’s far away from the yelling and lights and is just alone in a quiet room with a girl she’s wanted to make out with for at least a few months now. She had played a song for her, honestly.

“Are you okay? Do you need any water or anything?” Chloe asks, handing over some clothes. Beca picks them up – one is just a pair of running shorts, and the other is a shirt with the Piggly Wiggly grocery store logo on it. How Chloe came to acquire that is beyond her, but it’s something other than the sweaty shirt she threw on five minutes after leaving the stage at three in the afternoon, so she pulls her shirt off quickly to slip the new one on.

By the time her eyes have refocused after slipping it up and over her head and sliding the new one back down, Chloe is standing at her minifridge and staring at Beca. She looks frozen, mid-moment. Beca laughs, then gestures for the water bottle that’s in Chloe’s hand.

“If only I had known getting you drunk was the easiest way to get you to take your clothes off,” Chloe says, her voice still soft but now lower than before. Beca takes the water bottle when it’s handed to her, taking a long sip. She enjoys the reprieve from the heat rushing all over her body, that’s been rushing all over her since they stepped out into the heat and Chloe had danced on her at the first party they went to after the show, that only got worse when they got out of that limo.

“How do you handle that?” Beca asks, gesturing over to the door. Chloe cocks her head curiously, but Beca knows that she gets what Beca is asking. She seems to consider it, gathering her own water bottle and settling next to Beca on the couch before she even begins to answer.

“It was freaky, the first few times,” Chloe says, uncapping the water and drinking. Beca focuses in on the column of her throat, how it moves when she swallows. It’s mesmerizing in this stupid way that Chloe is mesmerizing. “I just got used to it. I decided I wasn’t going to let them win.”

“I kind of had a panic attack,” Beca whispers, and Chloe looks at her softly, nicely, but not in that way that people look with pity at her and she hates that. She doesn’t hate how Chloe is looking at her right now.

“Yeah,” Chloe says, then shifts a little closer, throwing one leg up onto Beca’s lap. Beca finds her hands landing on Chloe’s smooth, strong-looking calf. “I’m sorry, Becs.”

“It’s fine,” Beca mutters, rubbing the skin underneath her hands and not finding any hint of imperfection. It’s ridiculous. “I used to have them when I was younger. I knew what to do.”

Chloe looks at her, and Beca looks back. She can sense she’s shifted the conversation somewhere else, somewhere she usually wouldn’t. But she doesn’t mind it, not right now. Not when she’s in the Presidential suite of the nicest hotel in San Francisco with the prettiest girl in the world. It’d be stupid to fucking mind it right now.

“It’s not the scariest part about being me,” Chloe says. “Not really. I’m so scared to let people down, you know? Not just my friends or family, but my fans, my label…if I fail or mess up, what did I spend so many years chasing and working on, you know?”

“I don’t know what else I’d be if I wasn’t a musician,” Beca whispers. “That’s what’s scary to me. I wouldn’t know what else to do if I couldn’t be what I am right now. My dad always said it was dumb to just rush off and go to Los Angeles, and I went to college to get him off my back. But I was always going to be making music. For as long as I can remember.”

“Your dad gave you this hat,” Chloe says, tugging at the hat’s brim and smiling brightly. Beca laughs a little, because Chloe does look cute with it on, but she’s stumbled onto the thorny patch of Beca’s life, too.

“My step-dad did,” Beca says, then shrugs. “He’s from Seattle and keeps giving me sports apparel for Christmases and birthdays and stuff. I have a whole drawer in my closet devoted to just the shit he’s been giving me since I was fifteen.”

“I want to see it,” Chloe says, and it’s said so meaningfully and sincerely that Beca almost thinks she might cry. She wishes some music were on right now.

“I’ll show you,” Beca says, and looks out over the city below them. Chloe draws her attention back with a nudge of her leg.

“You tired?”

And yeah, she is tired. It feels like all of the alcohol in her system has got burnt up with her panic attack, or soaked up by this girl in front of her. So Chloe stands up, and Beca follows – they orchestrate themselves in relative silence, trading out the bathroom to get fully changed and ready for bed. By the time Beca has pulled on the running shorts and kind of swished water around in her mouth as a plea for future forgiveness to her dentist for drinking so many sugary drinks tonight, it’s dark except for the lights of the city.

She bumps into the edge of the bed, feeling around for what must be her side, since Chloe’s body isn’t there when she touches it. She slides in, and it’s a whole new kind of enveloping warmth, and she feels like she could drop off at any moment.

Chloe’s hand arrives up against her side then.

“Sleep well, Becs,” she whispers, her head nudging closer until it hits the outside of Beca’s shoulder. It grounds Beca in the softness of the bed, floating high up above the city.

“You too, Chlo,” she answers, and then reaches for Chloe’s hand to hold it across her stomach.

-

“We should talk about last night,” Chloe says, sunglasses slung on her face as they wait in the private club for their plane to be ready and approved or however private planes work. Across the room, Aubrey and Stacie are talking quietly, drinking something at the bar. Aubrey keeps looking over at Beca with some sort of look, the kind that Beca can’t decipher because she has a splitting headache.

There are enough windows in the club that she feels justified in wearing sunglasses, like Chloe. Sunglasses seem to be some sort of preferred celebrity airport accessory, but Beca is just fucking tired.

Across from them, Jesse and Jessica are both slumped over onto each other, asleep. Jessica is snoring, and Jesse has his head on Jessica’s shoulder. Beca has just finished sending a picture of it to Emily (omg take ten more pictures) when Chloe speaks.

“Why? It was just a weird thing that happened,” Beca says. She doesn’t want to talk about last night ever again. Feeling so suddenly freaked out by the flashing lights, combined with being drunk and hyped after their performance was not something she wanted to revisit.

“You almost puked, Bec,” Chloe says, gently. She turns her body on the couch so that her knee knocks into Beca’s thigh. “I’m worried about you.”

“I almost puke like once a week,” Beca says, shrugging and looking out the window as planes taxi around. “Not something to be worried about.”

“Beca, that was what my life is like,” Chloe says, grabbing ahold of Beca’s arm and gripping it firmly. “Last night. I can’t turn that off.”

Beca doesn’t know what exactly Chloe is trying to say, but she isn’t sure she wants to think about it either. She tries to shrug off Chloe’s hand, but Chloe instead pushes her sunglasses up her forehead and looks at Beca earnestly with her stupidly bright blue eyes.

“Chloe,” is all Beca can really say, in this petulant tone that Beca knows is stupid and childlike and counterproductive. But she doesn’t want to fuck with this. She doesn’t want to talk about last night and how she had had dreams about flashing lights.

“Becs,” Chloe says back, sliding her hand down Beca’s arm to grip her hand. Beca watches Chloe’s fingers weave with hers.

“I’m fine,” Beca says, even though she feels like absolute shit. She flips her sunglasses off and looks Chloe in the eye. “I’m your friend. I’m here for you, and I can deal with crazy people with huge cameras.”

Chloe’s smile is bright and huge, and Beca is distracted from staring at it when someone comes through to let them know they can board the plane. Chloe drops her hand, and Beca is left to shake Jesse and Jessica awake. They straggle out the door, and Beca turns behind her to pick up her computer bag only to find that Aubrey is standing there, holding it aloft, once again. This time, it looks a lot less secure hanging there in the air.

“You should be careful with this, you know,” Aubrey says, and even though she’s never been exactly supportive and accepting of Beca, her eyes look much more exacting. Beca feels like she’s been put under a microscope to be studied and judged for her weaknesses.

Beca takes her bag, and an hour and a half later when she steps into the terminal of LAX and is greeted with a swarm of paparazzi who seem to know her name, she grips the strap on it very tightly.

-

 **Chloe Beale steps out to 52 Stack**  
FRI July 7TH 2019

Having just finished up with her national tour and her June pride tour, Chloe Beale is partying the night away until three in the morning! Check out these pictures of her leaving one of L.A.’s hottest night clubs after seeing friend and opening act, Beca Mitchell, play. Also of note: Mitchell’s rumored boy-toy, Jesse Swanson (he composes films), and club owner Cynthia Rose Adams. Some powerful friends in the industry for pop’s princess!

-

“Emily. No one needs a flamingo lawn ornament,” Beca says, as Emily tries to pretend she hasn’t just picked up a flamingo lawn ornament and put it in her cart. Jesse, who is in the middle of pulling a set of lawn gnomes off the shelf, slowly slides them back into their place next to the flamingos.

“You don’t know that,” Emily says, though she slowly and wistfully removes the flamingo from her cart.

“Chloe would like a flamingo lawn ornament,” Jesse says, as a show of support. Whether it’s true or not, Beca glares at him. He puts his hands up in surrender.

Every year, Emily is tasked with buying decorations and items for her mom’s summer soiree, which involves a revolving door of themes and always involves Broadway stars doing drunken karaoke. It’s amazing, but Emily is not very good at staying on task.

“This party is Monte Carlo themed,” Beca says, pushing the cart down the aisle so that the two children she’s herding will stop picking up random things.

“We could put dollar bills all over her,” Emily says, jogging a little to catch up with Beca after placing the flamingo back on the shelf.

“The flamingo has no gender, Emily,” Beca says, just as Benji runs around the corner, carrying a giant poster of an ace of hearts. He almost hits one of the employees, who ducks out of the way at the last minute.

“What about flamingos?” he asks, putting the card in the cart. It is almost too tall for Beca to see over, but she persists. Emily sighs, shrugging. Jesse bumps Beca in the arm.

“Do I have to wear a suit for this party?” he asks.

“It’s Monte Carlo themed,” Beca says, shrugging, because she feels like that makes it an obvious yes. Jesse’s aversion to suits is long-standing, but she doesn’t have much sympathy for that. Emily picks up a huge blow-up Santa decoration and points at it with an adoring look on her face.

“It’s July,” Jesse says. Emily frowns.

“Is Chloe coming to the party?” Emily asks, setting Santa back on the shelf way too lovingly for July. Beca tries to ignore the hot feeling that spreads across her cheeks, remembering Chloe climbing all over her in the VIP booth at 52 Stack last week. There had been a lot of alcohol and a lot of dancing.

“She told me yes,” Beca says, shepherding her two wayward charges down the aisle towards the decorative lights portion of the store.

“Are you going to tell her how into her you are?” Jesse asks, grabbing ahold of Beca by the shoulders and massaging them. She doesn’t realize that they’re tense for a moment, but relaxes under his hold. She half-glares at him as Emily bounds ahead to look wonderingly at a light display that seems to mimic a Halloween haunted house set-up.

“I am not,” Beca says, shaking her head at both Emily and Jesse.

“Can we get this?” Emily asks, pointing at the strobe light that’s lighting up a coffin. Beca sighs.

-

Two days later, Beca is standing in the strobe light’s path, wearing a bright red dress that Emily had insisted screamed Monte Carlo, when Chloe Beale walks into the extended backyard of Catherine Junk.

She’s wearing a black dress, carrying her assigned poker chips and gesturing to Ashley with some glee about the set-up. Next to Beca, Jessica stops talking and stares as well.

“Are you going to tell her that you’re super into her?” Jesse asks, on Beca’s other side, chomping down on the nachos plate he’s assembled. He gets cheese on his tux. “Either of you could answer the question.”

Beca glares at him.

“Yeah,” Jessica says, launching forward and away from them to greet Chloe and Ashley.

“Look at that go-get-her attitude,” Jesse says, laughing a little as Jessica and Ashley hug for an extended amount of time. Ashley is wearing a gorgeous dress too, and Beca doesn’t blame Jessica one ounce for being into that. “Where’s yours?”

“I’m into a pop star,” Beca mutters, grabbing a napkin off the table behind them and trying to get the cheese off Jesse’s tux. “Different.”

“Not that different,” Jesse says, in the midst of chewing. “You shouldn’t play chicken with a girl who looks that good in a dress and also is super into you.”

“I’m not playing chicken. Maybe I don’t want to become a household name,” Beca says, dropping the napkin and giving up on the cheese stain. When she turns back around, Chloe has been waylaid by Mrs. Junk and Emily, who is practically vibrating in happiness at Chloe’s presence.

“Yeah, you do,” Jesse says. “You’re being a chicken. You’d rather let the opportunity pass you by then get your heart broken.”

“Thanks, dude,” Beca says, punching at Jesse’s chest. He drops some of his nachos on the ground and stares at her accusingly.

“Besides, she’s not into me,” Beca says, just as Chloe catches sight of them and smiles so widely that Beca is certain that it must hurt.

“Sure she isn’t,” Jesse says, before jamming more nachos into his mouth and walking away, leaving Beca to greet Chloe and her wide, insistent smile.

-

“Beca, you know how Benji was totally weird like, the first twenty times he tried to talk to me?” Emily says, waving her phone around in Beca’s face so she can see the background – the aforementioned Benji in his stage makeup doing Broadway stuff – like she’s forgotten what Benji looks like. “That was not nearly as bad as watching you and Chloe try to pretend you aren’t in love.”

“We are not,” Beca says, slapping the bass slider accidentally and drastically altering the sound of Emily’s voice on the playback. She adjusts it, then fiddles with the piano track to drop it an octave. “We are not in love, Emily. Please be professional in this professional space.”

“Literally everyone in this building is in love with Chloe Beale, but you are for real in love with her, Beca,” Emily whines, hitting the drums button for Beca and raising their treble. Beca tries to swat her meddling, annoying hands out of the way. This is her job.

“What does a 23 year-old singer-songwriter know about love?” Beca mutters, then grabs for Emily’s lyrics, humming over the chorus and tapping on the paper. “Can you get in the booth and layer vocals, you loser?”

“I’m telling my manager that you’re being mean to me,” Emily says, jumping out of her seat and striding toward the door to the booth. Her voice comes over the mic when she speaks next. “See if you ever work with anyone in the Sony Entertainment Group ever again.”

“I quake in my damn boots, Legacy,” Beca says, her finger pressing hard down on the intercom button. “Just the chorus, on a high harmony with the recorded vocals? Can you hear the track?”

Emily gives a thumbs up, indicating she has the audio, and her voice drifts out a little higher then, and Beca bumps her head to the slow song.

“What do you say, love? The world is waiting, the world is hanging on your next word, dropping as your lips do. What do you say, love? What do you say?” Emily sings, and Beca gives her own thumbs up to indicate she’s got the first chorus. Emily starts to talk, but she squeals, waving rapidly at something behind Beca. Beca turns, her headphones almost pulling from the jack to find Chloe Beale, who is smiling and sipping at a drink, hovering up against the back wall of the recording studio.

“Dude, what,” Beca starts, but Chloe has already gripped her in a hug and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Emily bursts out of the booth then, wrapping Chloe up in a characteristically tight hug.

“What are you doing here? Are you recording? Oh my God, that’s so awesome! I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you!” Emily squeals, and Chloe just laughs, returning the enthusiastic hug.

“Em, it’s been a week,” Beca interjects, considering pulling Emily away from Chloe so she doesn’t kill the most important current musical artist in American entertainment by suffocation. But they separate, Chloe drinking her tea and Emily excitedly smiling like a crazy person.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Chloe says, and Emily starts shaking her head back and forth so vehemently that Beca does actually put a hand on her shoulder so she doesn’t get any brain damage. “One of the execs mentioned you guys had a recording space today, and I thought I’d stop by.”

Chloe settles closer to Beca, her shoulder bumping Beca’s and causing a bit of a shiver to burst through Beca, even though the presence has, by now, become familiar. Emily is now smirking (what a jerk), and Beca glares back at her.

“You aren’t interrupting,” Emily says. “We’re just laying vocals down. You could stay if you wanted!”

Chloe looks over at Beca for confirmation of this offer, and Beca is kind of fucked. So she nods, and awkwardly pulls out the other rolling chair so Chloe can sit at the soundboard with her. Emily trots back into the booth, clapping excitedly, like a damn seal.

Beca settles into her chair and feels Chloe do the same next to her, and she can feel the girl’s eyes on her, and she momentarily forgets what exactly she’s supposed to be doing. Eventually, she figures it out enough to don her headphones before she taps the intercom button.

“Can you give me an overlay lyric on the third verse?” Beca asks, looking over her notes on the song. Inside the booth, Emily nods, breathing in and out while Beca plays the song from the back end of the second chorus into the third verse.

“I never thought to look for you, never saw you coming. I’m holding out my hand, and I’m waiting, waiting, waiting…” Emily croons, and the two recordings meld perfectly. She keeps covering the vocals into the bridge and chorus, and Beca keeps an ear on that while she hands Chloe a set of headphones.

Or, well, she slides them gently over Chloe’s ears, and her hands drift a little into Chloe’s hair and Chloe’s smile is soft and kind of awful for Beca’s insides.

“I need you, I need you to say what I’ve been waiting to hear, what I’ve been trying to say all along. So, what do you say love?”

Emily’s voice pulls up into the chorus, and Beca flips her drum machine on and starts a string track that she and Emily had been debating over adding on the back half of the song. Tapping along on the off-beat with the tom-toms creates a strange, rhythmic, nervous heartbeat to Emily’s words, and the strings back up the emotion. It sounds good, and Emily throws her hands up in a thumbs-up to indicate she likes the additions, and her voice gets stronger, more emotional, to close the song.

By the end of it, Beca drops the drums and the strings to let Emily’s voice hover over another refrain of, “What do you say, love?” It echoes in her ear, and it sounds so fucking awesome she kind of wants to do a happy dance. Emily is dancing in the booth, actually, drawing her headphones tighter around her ears while Beca plays it back.

Chloe’s hand sneaks up on her, knocking up against Beca’s thigh. Beca looks up from the soundboard and sees Chloe Beale bopping her head up and down with the song, her eyes bright and lovely and like, world-endingly awesome and staring at Beca Mitchell. She smiles then, tapping her knuckles against Beca’s thigh to the rhythm of the drums.

It takes a while for either of them to realize that the song’s ended, because Chloe is just aimlessly tapping and it carries the song for Beca, those drums, that rhythm. Like Chloe’s own heartbeat bumping against her leg. But eventually, Emily knocks on the glass between the booth and the soundboard, pointing behind Beca and Chloe with the kind of smile that means Beca is going to get absolutely destroyed by teasing from Jesse, Emily, and Cynthia Rose later on.

When she spins her chair around, this time actually dislocating the headphones from her body, Aubrey is standing there, her arms crossed and glaring at her. Beca immediately makes sure to glare back while Chloe says she has to head out, but that she’ll text Beca, tapping Beca’s thigh one last time and waving goodbye to Emily in the booth.

Aubrey makes sure Chloe gets out the door before she throws one last heavy glare in Beca’s direction.

“I’m sorry, I need to write a song down about how adorable that moment just was,” Emily says, her voice tinny in Beca’s headphones. She doesn’t even bother turning around as Emily comes out of the booth and into the room, excitedly pulling her notebook toward her. She just rolls her eyes. And stares at the door where Chloe Beale had just exited.

-

“So, I have a plan for how you should come out,” Jessica says, idly and also very seriously. Beca frowns, having just barely taken a sip of her rum and coke. Outside the restaurant, she can see, just vaguely, one lone paparazzi member with an enormous camera lens zoomed right in on her. She tries to school her face.

“I don’t need one,” Beca says, and Jessica sighs, tilting her head back and forth as though she’s a little metronome. Instead of directly replying to Beca, she reaches into her now way-too-big binder and pulls out a photo taken some time two weeks ago, where Beca is climbing into the front seat of her car with Chloe in tow. What Beca assumes is of some interest to Jessica in this context is the next picture: just vaguely, you can see the outline of Chloe’s arm reach directly for Beca’s thigh. It looks suggestive, to say the least.

Beca starts to open her mouth to protest this picture being used as some sort of evidence, but Jessica throws up a hand to stop her.

“Do not even start to say that you are just friends,” Jessica says, and Beca shuts her mouth. “I want you to consider that you are on the verge of dating the world’s biggest pop star. Actually consider it.”

“Jess,” Beca says. She has nothing to follow it up with, of course, but she just doesn’t want to talk about this right now. Or ever, really. Especially with that camera lens aimed right at her fucking face.

“Beca, please. Listen to me. I don’t want you to be flat on your face in love with Chloe Beale and be too stubborn to just come out. Because if you don’t, all you’re going to hear, every time you leave a building, are questions about whether you two are dating.”

“Which we aren’t,” Beca says, crossing her arms and glaring down at the pictures in front of her. “I’m a musician, Jess. I don’t need the world to know who I like in bed. I want them to listen to the music I make.”

“Beca, the world already has an idea of who you like in bed,” Jessica says, pointing down at the picture. Beca promptly flips it face down so she no longer has to look at it. “I understand wanting your privacy.”

“Then why are you telling me to come out in some grand statement or something?” Beca asks, grabbing for the coming out plan and glancing at it. “Chloe doesn’t care if I’m out or not. Not that that even matters, because we aren’t dating! Why are we talking about this?”

“Because I think you’d be happier, Beca,” Jessica says. Beca ignores her, looking down at the plan laid out in front of her on this sheet of paper.

“Are these notes from Ashley? Did Aubrey see this?”

Jessica sighs, settling back in her chair.

“Ashley and I had talked about you and Chloe and I asked for some advice as your manager and agent,” Jessica says. “And no, Aubrey hasn’t seen it. You’re going to somehow turn this on her, aren’t you?”

“Chloe and I aren’t a thing, and Aubrey hates me,” Beca says, dropping the sheet on the table between them. “She’d like it better if I was a wholesome WNBA player or something.”

“She cares about Chloe,” Jessica says. “She wants Chloe to be happy, and so does Ashley, who expressed some concern that the media putting pressure on you to come out instead of us controlling the narrative would be bad for Chloe.”

“‘Controlling the narrative,’ good lord,” Beca says, uncrossing her arms just so she can grab her drink and take a long gulp. “How about I don’t date Chloe in the first place? Then I won’t have to deal with any undue media pressure.”

Jessica gives her a look so exasperated that Beca laughs a little. Jessica smiles.

“I don’t think that’s something you can avoid at this point,” Jessica says. “Listen, Becs. I want to fight Jesse to be your Best Man in you two’s future wedding. I’m in this, okay? And I get how you feel. But you should really think about this. We were all there in San Francisco. If we don’t handle it first, you’re going to be closeted and hounded and you’ll have a hardcore, Chernobyl-level meltdown. If we do, you’ll be happy and well-publicized, and your meltdown will be much smaller and less bad for your relationship.”

“I don’t feel happy knowing someone is going to be taking a picture of me every time I go outside,” Beca says, glancing at the paparazzi dude across the street. Jessica looks over too.

“Yeah, but you’d be dating Chloe Beale. All actions have consequences, right?”

-

How exactly Beca ends up with Chloe Beale falling against her as they pile into her elevator is kind of a mystery. She remembers driving home, Chloe’s hand wrapping around hers on the ride home. But when she’s at home, Chloe is the confusing addition to the scene; Beca doesn’t remember Chloe asking to come over or Beca agreeing. She just knows that Chloe trips over the elevator floor and accidentally bodyslams her into the back wall.

“Oops,” Chloe giggles, and then rests there, up against Beca, for at least four more seconds.

“Dude, I gotta,” Beca says, but doesn’t really finish her sentence. Chloe pushes herself away from Beca and thunks against the opposite wall of the elevator while Beca pushes the button for her floor.

“I’ve never been to your place before,” Chloe whispers, and she smiles like that’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened to her.

“Well, you’ve never had a chance before,” Beca says, and when the elevator dings its arrival on her floor, she reaches for Chloe. The other woman’s hand clamps around hers, and she comes along willingly as they forge down the hallway to her door.

“You could’ve invited me over a whole bunch of times in the month we’ve been home,” Chloe whispers, right into Beca’s ear practically. She fumbles her keys a little, but manages to grip onto them before she flat out drops them. She steadily avoids her neighbors at all times, and doesn’t want to be found at four in the morning in the hallway with Chloe Beale’s arms slowly wrapping around her shoulders and meeting just above her sternum.

The door bumps open, after she forgets which way she has to turn the lock. Chloe’s body pulls tight to hers as Beca gets them into the entryway of her relatively okay-sized apartment. She tries to slide her shoes off, but Chloe keeps pulling her further into the apartment, pushing Beca onto her own couch and sitting legitimately on her lap.

“Are you drunk?” Beca asks. “Because I have this like, couch cushion you could sit on that’s probably more comfortable than, you know, me.”

Chloe sighs, dropping her arms around Beca’s neck and staring at her. It’s dark, but the lights from outside catch just enough of Chloe’s eyes that Beca can still sort of read her expression, or at least see it. She doesn’t know how to read it, really – but it’s something.

“I’m not drunk,” Chloe says, quietly, her voice sounding hoarse, presumably from the shouting she’d been doing at the club, yelling in Beca’s ear about how much she loved the song she was playing. That had made her feel way more drunk than any drinks she could have gulped down tonight. “I don’t really get drunk in public. I just feel...”

Chloe doesn’t finish, just stares at Beca. Beca can’t handle it.

“You need anything?” Beca asks, letting Chloe fall to the side and against the armrest, getting up to grab some water from the kitchen. “Do you need Advil or something?”

“You’re not very subtle about your avoidance,” Chloe says, simply, her body lying down more on the couch, her legs kicking out to the seat Beca has just abandoned. “I will take the Advil though.”

“Crazy you don’t get headaches when thousands of people are screaming at you, but you do from one night out,” Beca says, handing over a glass of water and grabbing a bottle of Advil from her bookcase. How it had gotten there was a bit of mystery; it was probably Jesse crashing on her couch one night or something.

“Different feelings,” Chloe says softly, drinking the water and swallowing the pills quickly enough. She stands up then, just as Beca sits down, kicking off her shoes under the coffee table. Chloe wanders her way over to Beca’s record shelf, dropping the needle on the record player without even looking at the disc itself.

The music starts up, and Beca feels it settle in the air around them like a blanket. She sees in the way Chloe’s body sways a little that she feels it too. She likes that about Chloe, likes the way music moves her.

“Different how?” Beca asks, and Chloe slides an older record by the Bee Gees off the shelf to examine its cover, before setting it down on the coffee table in front of Beca. She goes back to the shelf quickly.

“I feel so happy out in front of the crowd, having them sing along,” Chloe says, pulling an Ingrid Michaelson album off next and stacking it on top of the Bee Gees. “Watching you DJ is a little different. You’re really good, you know. I don’t know if I ever said that before. And hot, when you’re concentrating.”

Beca chokes a little on the air she’s trying to breathe, but doesn’t respond as Chloe pulls another album off the shelf and stacks it. It’s The Weeknd now.

“Whenever I feel it coming on, you can be well aware if ever I try to push you away, you can just keep me there. So please say you’ll meet me, meet me halfway,” Chloe sings, tuning into the song playing over Beca’s record player fully and bopping her head as she sorts through the records and keeps stacking. Beca just watches, listens to Chloe’s voice, sees her make some sort of mysterious pile out of Beca’s highly organized records.

“What are you doing?” Beca asks, and it comes out sounding way more existential than she had intended – really she had just wanted to know why Chloe was destroying her system of organization.

“I want you to make me a mix out of these albums,” Chloe says, and Beca stares down at the stack as it changes and shifts and grows with new music. Chloe looks beautiful, and the music she’s making, both imaginary and physically, are beautiful too.

She likes it. Oh God, she likes it. So she joins in, stands up, meeting Chloe somewhere down her record shelf.

“Shape by the clearest blue, shape by the clearest blue,” Beca sings, and Chloe smiles as she sings too. The song feels epic now, shifting the air with the synths that Beca had flat adored the first time she heard them, building up like walls around them. Beca stops singing.

She leans forward and kisses Chloe Beale, her hands hovering in the air around Chloe Beale’s face, waiting until Chloe responds, pushing closer to Beca and sliding her hands to Beca’s own face and kissing so well that Beca is sure she almost blacks out.

By the time Chloe pulls away, breathing heavily, Beca is sure she’s probably dead. Her face feels unnaturally warm and she’s smiling like an insane person, but Chloe is smiling in that beautiful crazy way she does sometimes, when she’s really happy, like when she’s seen a cute puppy.

“You have a taste for the dramatic,” Chloe says, leaning forward to steal a kiss from Beca before she can respond. “You know, climactic music and everything. That’s pretty cliché.”

“Shut up,” Beca says, and kisses Chloe before she can respond.

-

Beca wakes up at eleven and wanders into her living room to find Chloe Beale sipping tea and flipping through a catalog for audio equipment. She’s wearing a shirt with her own face on it, from the tour.

“I didn’t even know I had tea,” Beca says, crashing onto the couch next to Chloe. The other girl drops the catalog and settles against her, placing her head right up against the crook of Beca’s neck.

“I’m a singer,” Chloe says, shrugging. “We have a sense. You should know.”

“You artists,” Beca says, laughing. Chloe giggles in response, shuffling even closer on the couch. She’s practically in Beca’s lap again.

“You remember in Boston, when you sang with me?” Chloe says, and Beca nods, because how could she forget? “That wasn’t the first time I heard you sing.”

“You weren’t in one of my college bars or something, were you?” Beca asks. “Because that would be horrifying to know.”

Chloe laughs, shifting even closer to Beca so that there’s hardly a spot on their bodies they aren’t touching. It’s still the slightest bit uncomfortable, because Beca is probably going to be useless at being near other people for her entire life, but she hardly feels nervous about it anymore. It’s just Chloe, and her, sitting on her couch.

“I heard you singing with Benji at the KCAs,” Chloe says, and Beca laughs this time. “I mean, I thought it was you, because I had kind of heard you at the Grammys.”

“When you told me that a song I had produced was your ladyjam,” Beca says.

“I thought you were cute and talented,” Chloe says, shrugging.

“I threw a party when you came out,” Beca says, and Chloe laughs again, this time so happily that Beca smiles too. She reaches for her phone, flipping her Twitter open. Beca watches the familiar pattern of movements as Chloe takes a half-second glance at her replies - they’re somewhere in the thousands.

“Did you want to tweet about how you made out with a super hot DJ last night?” Beca asks. She hopes that Chloe knows she’s joking, because that is exactly the kind of thing Chloe would say.

“I was actually about to tweet about how I expected to get laid in the next ten minutes,” Chloe says, giggling. But she flips over to her Instagram, picking through her photo library. She settles on a photo Beca only vaguely remembers taking - Ashley had stopped them as they were all walking towards some pizza place and made her and Chloe stop to take a picture in front of an enormous moose mural in Chicago. You can hardly see them, but Chloe selects it, and arranges it, flipping through filters until something good appears.

She types in some comment, and Beca watches as she flips back to Twitter, and her replies rocket upward. Beca’s own phone, somewhere in her kitchen, starts to go crazy.

“You should turn your reply notifications off,” Chloe says, giggling.

“I hope you said something very flattering about me, because I don’t do well with criticism,” Beca says. Chloe leans forward and kisses her, and Beca forgets about everything else other than this girl climbing into her lap.

It’s different immediately than last night. Last night, they had been coming off a huge bender, just lazily making out in the living room and bedroom. Chloe is on her in seconds, her hands gripping Beca’s hair tightly as their mouths slide together with some familiarity. That familiarity is intoxicating, which is stupid romance novel level shit.

It feels like two month’s worth of staring at Chloe and wanting to do this is coming out right now. Chloe’s hands slip right under Beca’s shirt, traversing her skin and leaving goosebumps in their wake. She tries not to shiver as Chloe lets go of her mouth to trail her own down Beca’s neck and back up again.

“Take me to bed,” Chloe whispers, right in her ear. Beca does shiver this time. But she also takes Chloe to bed, as requested.

-

#tbt on #pridetour with @djbmitch. It’s been a good summer. instagram.com/wakfasfj  
- **Chloe Beale** (@bealechloe)

@bealechloe it’s been fine.  
- **Beca Mitchell** (@DJBMitch)

@bealechloe @djbmitch fUCK  
- **StChloe** (@intheparade23)

-

“Goddamn it, Becs, you couldn’t wait one more week?” Jesse yells, drawing the attention of nearly everyone in the crowded lobby of the theatre where a movie he’s scored is premiering. Beca refrains from hitting him. He’s wearing a nice suit, and she’s wearing a nice dress. Jessica would call it uncouth.

In fact, Jessica is glaring at them from over by the bar, where she’s frantically texting someone – probably Ashley, probably trying to manage the information she spilled on the way to the theatre. She and Chloe had enjoyed two whole days of relative unquestioning managers, as everyone had needed to chill after the end of the tour, but today had been the chosen day to reveal all.

The glare Jessica’s sending could be a reflection of her annoyance with Jesse yelling at her, or her annoyance that Beca had gone and made out with Chloe Beale without any supervision or forewarning.

“Chill, Jesse,” Beca says, placing her hand as softly as possible on his arm without indicating to anyone else how pissed she is at him. A couple cameras flash and manage to catch the moment, which is annoying.

“Ugh, I had money down on next week,” Jesse says, sighing. “A lot of money!”

“You bet on when we would get together?” Beca asks, her hand on his arm tightening. He winces a little bit, turning away from the small crowd of photographers the film has allowed into the lobby.

“Yeah, and I lost,” Jesse says. “Have some sympathy.”

“No, no sympathy. Who was involved in this?”

Jesse looks around guiltily, straight over at Jessica, and Beca gasps. She glares daggers over at Jessica, who flips her off in return.

“Fuck all of you,” Beca mutters, pulling her phone out of her bag and beginning to text Chloe about this bullshit. “I can’t believe you bet on my romantic life.”

“We’ve been betting on your romantic life for ages,” Jesse says, rolling his eyes, pulling Beca up against his body by throwing an arm around her shoulder. “There was a bet senior year about whether you would sleep with Luke or not.”

“My old station manager Luke?” Beca asks, gasping and now ready to actually pummel Jesse. He doesn’t seem concerned, buttoning his suit and smiling at someone who passes them.

“Yeah, and I was the only one who doubled down that both you and Jessica would sleep with him,” he says, proudly, and Beca is totally affronted.

“I’m sure you were thrilled to know that it was almost a threesome,” Beca mutters, typing out pure nonsense to Chloe in the hopes of coming up with actual words eventually. The last thing sent between them was a selfie of Chloe’s, where she’s drinking wine with Stacie in her cool-ass house in the hills.

Jesse stares at her, and Beca grins with the knowledge that she’s shut him up as she flips him off.

“Hey, Mr. Swanson,” someone asks and both she and Jesse turn to find some reporter having strayed close to them. He flashes his press credentials for half a second. The dude looks between her and Jesse. “Um, Mrs. Swanson?”

“No,” Beca says shortly, slipping her phone back away. “Beca Mitchell.”

“Sorry,” the guy says, pushing his nerdy glasses up his forehead. “I just assumed. Wait, are you the Beca Mitchell who went on tour with Chloe Beale? My wife took my daughter to your stop in San Francisco!”

“Awesome,” Beca says, shrugging and turning to glance at Jessica, who’s watching their interaction with a frown. “I’m going to go get a drink. Your usual?” Beca asks, looking over at Jesse, who nods easily and squeezes Beca’s arm one last time before she slips away and over to Jessica.

“Who is that?” Jessica asks, still eyeing the reporter guy. He and Jesse are chattering away now, laughing like they’re old friends. “God, why did you have to go and try to date the hottest pop star on the market? I think everyone is from OK Magazine.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for the stress my personal life has caused you,” Beca says, sighing as if the burden is literally killing her. “And also, when the fuck did you put money down on it?”

“My week was in San Francisco. If only I had started a bet for a mental breakdown as well,” Jessica says, then pauses. “Did you mean when we started the bet?”

“I did, you dick,” Beca says, leaning over the bar to ask the bartender for a rum and coke and a whiskey sour. “You almost won out, though.”

“This brings me no comfort,” Jessica says, sighing and sipping her own wine. “We started the bet right after we left for tour. CR opened the betting at a thousand.”

“What the fuck?” Beca asks, her voice reaching kind of screechy heights. “Whoever the hell won should throw me a party.”

“I’ll let Benji know,” Jessica says, shrugging. “I’m glad you two finally stopped eye-sexing in public, though.”

“Yeah, you seem thrilled.”

“I mean, I’m kind of pissed that I lost a thousand bucks,” Jessica says, looking at Beca fully in the eye. “I’m worried, too, you know. We have a lot to figure out, and fast, before anyone catches on. You should think about the plan.”

“I don’t want to worry right now,” Beca says, then takes a long gulp of her drink. “So can we not?”

Jesse arrives before Jessica can say anything.

-

Chloe is a very good kisser, and Beca considers that an accomplishment considering she’s been lusting after Chloe from afar for the past few years, and in much closer quarters over the past month.

Chloe also owns a lot of lingerie. Beca had found this out tonight, when she was invited over to eat dinner, watch movies, and hang out. This invitation had included very little pretense, and so Beca had ditched work early so that she could make it out to the hills. Chloe had barely let her out of her car without kissing her, and they had thankfully managed to travel inside out of the crazy heat, and into Chloe’s massive bed upstairs.

“I thought you promised me food,” Beca says, between kisses, with Chloe underneath her. Her red hair is spread out all over the white bedspread, and she runs her hand through it instinctively.

“I decided I wanted to eat other things,” Chloe says, giggling and pushing in closer for another kiss. Beca laughs, and she feels Chloe’s smile against her lips.

“That’s a bad joke, and you should feel bad,” Beca whispers, kissing Chloe more firmly, trying not to grind down like a teenage boy. Chloe doesn’t seem to mind, as her hips are subtly moving against Beca’s, growing more insistent every moment that Beca pays them no attention.

Beca’s hands move down Chloe’s body, feeling the lacy-sheer combo of the lingerie that Chloe had revealed literally seconds after the door being closed behind Beca. It was white, too, and she had happily allowed Beca to gawk at her for a good ten seconds.

“Take it off,” Chloe mutters, just after Beca’s hand flits past her nipple. Beca’s not going to out and out deny her, so she flips over, and Chloe climbs onto her. Her hands fumble a little (despite the fact that this is not her first time, she’s never been very good at unsnapping a bra), but she gets it off, and her hand rests over Chloe’s chest without impediment.

“You’re gorgeous,” Beca says, and Chloe leans down to kiss her quite thoroughly, tongue mixing in and sending sparks through Beca’s body and southward.

“I’m happy,” Chloe says, quite simply, against Beca’s lips.

So Beca keeps going, and is happy too.


	4. The Truth is the Stars are Falling

“Beca,” Samantha, her receptionist intern, says as she opens the door to Beca’s office. She’s in the middle of listening to the new demos she’s been working on with Lilly, the artist she finally decided to call in even if her bird noises are weird. Samantha sounds more like she’s asking a question, and so Beca picks her head up to see her nervously tapping against the glass door.

“What’s up?” she asks, setting her headphones to the side. Samantha kind of twitches, which is never a good sign. She’s always nervous, but this is the kind of nervous that usually means Beca has some big, important person in her pen.

“Um, someone is here to see you?” Samantha says, this time totally a question. Beca stares at her.

“Who?” she finally asks, when it becomes clear that Samantha is not going to take her silence as a sign to continue. She thinks, for half a second, that it could be Chloe, but that’s impossible – Chloe is going on some sort of excursion with her friend Amy where they go somewhere in the canyons and Amy suntans while Chloe hikes or something. There had been a number of pictures sent to her of the drive out there.

“Aubrey Posen? She says that you know who she is, and won’t give me any more information, and she’s also threatening to break down the door if she isn’t allowed to come see you,” Samantha says, her words flooding out of her. She still looks like she might shit her pants, even if she also looks very relieved.

“Let her back,” Beca says, rolling her eyes and checking her computer for any new messages from Chloe, just in case this was some premeditated thing. “And also, can you call Epic about setting up a recording session with Emily?”

“Will do,” Samantha says, and Aubrey apparently doesn’t even wait for Samantha to let her in, because the girl has barely made it through the doorway before Aubrey is pushing into Beca’s office and regarding it with heavy disdain. She seems to wait for the door to close before she even speaks a word. Through the glass, Samantha is watching with wide eyes, and Beca waves her away.

“Beca,” Aubrey starts, in that Aubrey way that drives Beca up a fucking wall. It is usually followed by a scathing critique or some sort of allegedly well-intentioned comment. “We need to talk about Chloe.”

“What about Chloe?” Beca says, gesturing half-heartedly at one of the chairs in front of her desk. Aubrey doesn’t sit, but moves to the CDs she has stacked in her office. Cotillion is open and covered in notes, very prominent on the shelf. Aubrey eyes it for a moment before she speaks again. It’s probably for maximum fucking drama.

“You two are together now,” Aubrey says. She says it bluntly and unhappily. This reaction is very much in contrast to every other reaction up until now. “And while I am happy that Chloe is happy, I must say that you are not an ideal choice for her.”

“Personally or professionally?” Beca asks, rolling her eyes at Aubrey’s summation of events. It’s clear that Aubrey isn’t exactly trying to be cruel, she’s just being a downright bitch. Which, fuck her.

“Both,” Aubrey says airily. “Professionally, there are any number of obvious reasons why you two are star-crossed. Power status, different types of talent and fame, different professional desires, your high school yearbook photos will not look good when matched with hers on some inevitable when they were young feature. You are also very short and that would look odd in pictures.”

“Thank you,” Beca says, but Aubrey just keeps talking.

“I like you Beca,” Aubrey says. “While I do have some issues with this - ”

“Yeah, you just listed them,” Beca says, watching as Aubrey sits down. Her eyes flit once again to the Cotillion record that’s covered in notes.

“ - While I do have some issues, I know that Chloe likes you. I’m not trying to dissuade you from dating her.”

“Then what do you want?” Beca asks, looking Aubrey in the eye as the other woman stares straight back.

“I want you be very, very careful. Your career and hers can be changed by even the slightest of dating rumors. I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“It sounds like you don’t want her career to get hurt,” Beca asks, considering throwing her Los Angeles smog-globe that her dad bought her as a joke gift at Aubrey’s face.

“People are going to start to wonder about you two, Beca,” Aubrey says, leaning forward and placing one hand on the edge of Beca’s desk. “People are going to begin calling Jessica, calling this office, asking for comments about your relationship. People are going to follow you at three in the morning when you leave the club, or when you go to the grocery store in your pajamas. Chloe may have not been paying attention, but I know that you value your ability to look like a slob while out and about.”

Beca rolls her eyes, but they stick onto the cover of Chloe’s album up on her bookcase.

“Consider these things before you decide to throw yourself into the public spotlight,” Aubrey says, and moves her hand back off Beca’s desk, sitting back in the chair that Beca had specifically chosen for its uncomfortableness. But Aubrey looks perfectly at home, perched, staring and smiling.

“You want me to keep us a secret,” she sumrises, and Aubrey tilts her head again.

“It will be impossible to keep it a secret,” Aubrey says. “I’m asking that you consider keeping it an unconfirmed rumor until you feel yourself ready to be what Chloe deserves.”

“I feel like I should have my lawyer here with me,” Beca says, in a joking way that is not a joke – Jessica should be here, so she can yell at Aubrey for fucking bullying her into a corner, for giving Beca a way out from Jessica’s own plan.

“Contrary to what you may think, I’m here as Chloe’s friend,” Aubrey says, and then stands up from the chair, touching the edge of Beca’s fucking desk again.

“Is this what friends do?” Beca asks, and Aubrey pauses, looking at Beca directly and without much of anything playing across her face. It’s stone-cold scary, and Beca feels herself try not to shrink underneath the look.

“It was nice talking to you, Beca. See you soon,” Aubrey says, and then turns in leaves.

Seconds after Beca sees her walk out the pen’s doors, Samantha is pushing into her office, staring with wide eyes at Beca.

“Beca? Who was that? She was terrifying. Are you – are you okay?” Samantha asks, and she takes half a step closer before Beca looks up at her, and stops.

“Fine,” Beca says. “Tell everyone to trawl Soundcloud for artists. And that if there are any bird sounds, I’m making them run laps around the block.”

-

“Oy, wallaby child!” is how Fat Amy greets Beca for the first time they meet. This is in Chloe’s official homecoming welcome party, which features not that many people surrounding the gorgeous infinity pool, with no one getting in. She’s heard of Fat Amy, of course, has seen her in Chloe’s video, but the first face-to-face is this.

Jesse, who’s in the middle of telling this weird story about a bassoon player in his orchestra, steps aside just in time for Fat Amy to smack into her heavily. Beca has always rejected the narrative that she is small, but in this case, it should be known that Fat Amy nearly crushes her tiny body. She also doesn’t know where the nickname has come from, considering she’s certain she bears no resemblance to a wallaby.

“Um, hi,” Beca says, and Amy gives her a chest bump that knocks her backward another few steps. Before she can fall into the pool, though, Chloe comes up behind her and stabilizes her, grabbing her at her waist on both sides.

“Amy, can you try not to kill my girlfriend?” Chloe says, pressing a kiss to Beca’s cheek that Jesse very nearly giggles at. Across the pool, Beca can see Emily, who’s deep in conversation with Ashley, also smile very widely. She rolls her eyes at them, and at Chloe.

“Tough love, isn’t that what Aubrey’s always going on about?” Amy says, shrugging and shoving at Beca in what seems to be a representation of tough love. Jesse does outright laugh now. “You know, if you walk through the jungle you earn your stripes or you die of frog poisoning or whatever.”

“I don’t think that’s how that one goes,” Chloe says, though she says it like she’s wondering whatever the correct pronunciation of that garbled mess was. Her hands slide a little to buckle up over Beca’s waist, and her head rests on Beca’s shoulder.

“So, the little buckaroo finally landed the longhorn,” Amy says, nudging at Beca again. Beca barely follows the metaphor. “I heard all about the down and dirty details while we were sunning. Surprised you had the lady balls to go for it.”

“Um,” Beca says, because there are so many things happening in that series of words that she has nearly become lost in it. “Thank you?”

“Wasn’t a compliment, small one. How could you not go for this ginger hottie the minute you saw her? I hope you feel shame,” Amy says, grinning. Beca finds herself smiling back anyway, despite her now excessively high levels of discomfort.

“I do,” Beca says, shrugging and smiling.

“You know, on the day that Chloe said that stuff on Ellen, Beca threw a party because she was, quote, just having a good day,” Jesse says, sipping his beer just after so Beca can’t hit him without causing a scene. She grunts in disapproval at him though, and he shrugs.

“Awkward,” Amy says, then nudges at Jesse. “You’re the ex-boyfriend, right? Is she good in bed?”

“Oh my God,” Beca says, kind of loudly and high-pitched. A couple people look over at her with confusion, then realize Amy is right there and figure out the source of her unhappiness.

“We never had sex, so I can’t really speak to that,” Jesse says, shrugging. Beca does hit him this time. He pats her on the shoulder in response.

“I am going to go inside to the bathroom,” Beca says, interjecting before Amy can answer him and ask about her makeout skills or something equally as private or embarrassing. “Away from this conversation.”

“Aw, Becs, but you’re great at kissing,” Jesse says, reaching out to grab for her forearm. She shrugs away, moving past the two of them. Chloe tags along, grabbing ahold of the very back of Beca’s pants by the belt loop and giggling the whole way. Beca winds her way through the house to try to get to the bathroom, which she doesn’t really need to use except to contain her social anxieties, but she gets pushed into another room by Chloe’s hands.

She doesn’t really get to see the room, just catches a glimpse of an enormous couch-bed type deal that must cost more than Beca’s whole apartment, and hears the door close before Chloe is kissing her, pressing her backwards. She hits the couch-bed right as Chloe’s teeth bite into her lip, and she gasps as she falls.

Chloe is standing up above her with a huge smile, red hair all around her face. The room is lit only by the sun peeking through the windows, setting over the hills. And then Chloe is coming closer, one knee nosing apart Beca’s, and Chloe settles between Beca’s legs and on top of her, and starts kissing her again.

“Your friends are nosy,” Beca gasps, when Chloe breaks away to start pressing kisses all along Beca’s neck, and then latches onto the area just beneath her ear that’s sensitive as fucking hell. Her hands land on Chloe’s ass, then, and Chloe moves forward under her hands, grinding forward. It’s pretty teenager of them, but it’s great, this couch-bed is great, and it’s all fucking good.

“She’s just looking out for me,” Chloe whispers, right into Beca’s ear. “Being good in bed is an important piece of criteria.”

“Fuck,” is all Beca’s got, because Chloe’s just bitten her fucking earlobe at the tail end of her sentence.

“Reach out, touch faith,” Chloe whisper-sings, right up against her fucking ear again, licking the earlobe, and Beca’s just fucking discovered how sensitive her ears are today, because her whole body practically jerks under the combination of the singing, the song choice, and the action. Her hands grip drastically harder; Chloe grinds down harder.

“Do not fucking sing that right now,” Beca says, her hand pushing up from Chloe’s ass and slipping just underneath the hem of her flowy t-shirt thing. “What’s another one of your lady jams?”

Chloe hums up against Beca’s lips.Beca’s hands move of their own accord, sliding further up Chloe’s shirt. This seems to confirm something for Chloe, because she giggles.

““Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon,” Chloe says, and Beca kind of laughs.

“Bit on the nose,” Beca says, and Chloe bites her lip in response. “Lay where you’re laying, don’t make a sound.”

Chloe hums, kissing Beca hard. The kiss is warm, and Beca leans upwards to keep Chloe’s body pressed against hers, her hands gripping onto the bottom of her shirt tightly, while Chloe seems to unconsciously rock on her lap. This is a good thing, so she keeps singing.

“I know they’re watching, they’re watching,” Beca sings, and Chloe flat moans, sliding her hands around Beca’s neck and kissing her hard. When she gets a chance to breathe, she barely has a second. “People probably know we’re making out somewhere, you know that, right?”

“I don’t care,” Chloe says, kissing Beca again. “Take off my shirt, and tell me another one of your lady jams.”

Beca’s hand clenches again in the bottom of Chloe’s shirt for half a second more before she decides, fuck it. She pulls upwards, and Chloe raises her arms from around Beca’s neck to let the shirt up and off her head. It leaves in its wake a near-sheer bra that Beca can practically see through.

“Fuck me,” she says, mostly involuntarily – literally anyone with an attraction to women and probably like seventy percent of the rest of people would have the same reaction to a shirtless Chloe Beale in a sheer bra.

“Maybe not when I have twenty people over at my house,” Chloe says, pushing back again and grinding down. Beca barely makes sense enough of the world to put her hand over Chloe’s chest, and Chloe groans a little in response. “Tell me another of your lady jams.”

““Break on Through to the Other Side” by the Doors,” Beca says, pressing a kiss to Chloe’s neck, right next to her bra strap. Her other hand slips around just underneath the back strip, fiddling slightly unhappily with the snaps.

“Anything from this century, Becs?” Chloe asks, teasingly, her hand reaching between them to slide down Beca’s sternum and to her stomach.

“You just want to hear another one,” she says, and then kind of shivers when Chloe’s hand slides up under her shirt.

“I do,” Chloe says. “I want the whole playlist.”

“How do you know there’s a playlist?”

“I know you,” Chloe whispers, and that’s shivery enough on its own. “You have a sex playlist somewhere.”

““The Hills” by The Weeknd,” Beca answers, and Chloe’s hand successfully makes its way to her own bra then, though it is not so sheer or perfect or probably expensive as Chloe’s. Which is fine, because Chloe can’t see it right now. Just, next time, she needs to wear the nice shit.

“You mixed our lady jams together a week after we met?” Chloe asks, sitting up again, her hand sliding out from under Beca’s shirt and looking down at her with now something more than just lust. Beca practically shrinks under the look.

“I forgot about that,” she says, shrugging. She had, actually, in the moment before the words left her mouth. But it hadn’t been intentional at the time – it had been somewhere in her head, for sure, even if she hadn’t wanted to talk about it to herself.

“Your man on the road he doin’ promo, you said keep our business on the low-low, I’m just tryin’ to get you out the friend zone,” Chloe sings, and it’s probably the fucking sexiest thing Beca has ever in her entire life had the pleasure of seeing. The way Chloe moves her body is practically illegal, and Beca is just fucking watching like a drunk idiot at a strip club. “’Cause you look even better than the photos. I can’t find your house send me the info, drivin’ through the gated residential.”

“Found out I was coming, sent your friends home. Keep on trying to hide it but your friends know,” Beca sings with her, and that seems to provoke something else entirely in Chloe. Beca ends up flat on her back again, her shirt and bra halfway off her body, and then, twenty minutes later, after a hilarious (not hilarious) phone call from Jessica, she is on her way to the car to get to the club on time with a bright red mark blooming right below her ear, and the very solid memory of Chloe Beale singing the words I only fuck you when it’s half passed five.

-

“What is this weird song about exercise? You aren’t Olivia Newton John, Em,” Beca says, tossing aside another random song of Emily’s. They’re trying to pick the next song to record for the new record, and Emily has shown up to today’s session with a whole box – literally a whole fucking box – of sheets with random notes or full songs on them.

“You know I write for stress!” Emily practically yelps, and Beca looks up at her to find her looking pretty harried. So she kind of awkwardly leans across the space between them and pats Emily on the thigh. This seems to get Emily to breathe, just a little. “Sorry. This is always the worst part.”

“Killing your babies?” Beca asks, picking up a song about…cleaning. She sets it aside immediately.

“I just put a lot into them, and then we just toss them out,” Emily says, sorting one song into their semi-good pile, and picking up another from the box. “Oh my God, like this one!”

This new one is written, amusingly, on the back of a program from Benji’s show, dated sometime in June. The ad on the back was apparently lucky to be white, because Emily’s loopy handwriting runs all across it – it’s a full, finished song with marks for choruses and breakdowns.

“Let me see,” Beca says, and looks over the lyrics for a second, trying to imagine a rhythm for them. “When tomorrow comes, I’ll be on my own, feeling frightened of the things that I don’t know…”

“No, more like, when tomorrow comes, I’ll be on my own, feeling frightened of…slower. And then the chorus has these sweet drums and violins and stuff. I got all I need when I got you and I, I look around me and see a sweet life, I’m stuck in the dark, but you’re my flashlight…”

“I like it,” Beca says, already tapping the slow rhythm to the song matching with Emily’s words. It’s a damn good song.

“Me too,” Emily says, then shrugs sadly. “It’s way too big for me, though. That’s why I didn’t just bring it when we first started working.”

“Em, you can make this song,” Beca says, reaching out to grab for Emily’s arm in reassurance. “You’re fucking good.”

“I don’t mean it that way,” Emily says, smiling at Beca. “I just don’t feel like this song is for me. I was going to sell it.”

“Let’s demo it then,” Beca says, taking the Playbill from Emily’s hands and flipping through the thing. Benji’s little bio is decorated in hearts, which is pretty fucking cute. Emily makes a hum of agreement, and picks up another song from the stack.

“This is just a grocery list,” Emily mutters, looking confused. “How did this get in here?”

“What were you buying?” Beca asks, flipping up another song and reading through the notes enough to toss it into the semi-good pile. Her phone buzzes somewhere on the desk behind her and Emily’s head jerks up in excitement. “Down, Legacy.”

“Is that Chloe?” Emily asks, smacking Beca on the leg with the grocery list she’s holding. “What is she saying?”

“You need to calm down,” Beca says, spinning her chair around to grab her phone. It isn’t Chloe, per se, but it is Stacie sending a picture of Chloe bending down to talk to some little girl at the children’s hospital she’s visiting today. It’s sweet, and the little girl looks so in love with Chloe, and Chloe looks equally as enthralled. Beca shows the picture to Emily.

“Oh my God, that’s so cute, I might die,” Emily says, placing a hand very dramatically on her chest. “I can’t believe you’re dating finally.”

“Dude, can you like, keep it down?” Beca says, shoving at the base of Emily’s chair with her leg. “I don’t know if you noticed, but most of the people in this building have met her and know how much money they could sell a recording of our conversation to TMZ for.”

“This is a recording studio,” Emily says, and Beca very quickly and surreptitiously checks the mixing board to check that the record buttons are not on. They aren’t, and Beca relaxes a little. “I’m just excited! Aren’t you excited?”

“I am excited,” Beca says, though she knows she doesn’t sound that way. Emily seems to move through this bog simply because she knows Beca well enough to ignore the grumpiness. “But we don’t want to like, throw ourselves to the wolves either.”

“Does she want you to be like, her secret lover? Like, um, that song? Because that wouldn’t be very nice.”

“That could be any number of songs, Emily.”

“But that one song. Let me know that I’ve done wrong, when I’ve known this all along…” Emily sings, trying to pick up the beat of the song in her head. Beca recognizes the song with a sigh.

“Are you singing “Dirty Little Secret” by the damn All-American Rejects?” Beca asks, and Emily seems to remember the song bit by bit, humming her way through some of the words and picking up some of them. “Please do not sing my like, middle school anthem to me right now.”

“I’ll keep you my dirty little secret, don’t tell anyone, or you’ll be just another regret,” Emily sings, smiling and poking at Beca. Beca squirms backwards.

“You’re acting like your mother, Legacy,” Beca says, and Emily stops singing abruptly, looking affronted.

“How dare you?” Emily asks, and then flat out smacks Beca in the head with the grocery list still in her hand. Beca gasps, picking up a big chunk of papers and swings for Emily’s head with it. It doesn’t connect, because Emily ducks like a ninja, then swings again and connects with Beca’s head again.

“Stop hitting me!” Beca yelps, leaping from her chair to go for the couch. Emily just follows her. They don’t get any work done for the rest of their session.

-

“Why are you here?” Aubrey asks, and not kindly. Beca rolls her eyes, sipping her coffee mug at Chloe’s kitchen counter. It’s like, ten in the morning and she’s only just woken up thanks to Chloe forcing them up all night watching, of all things, Transformers. All eight hundred of them.

“Well, generally, when a person is in a place in the morning, wearing pajamas, it could be assumed they were there during the night too. What are you doing here? And also, you have keys to this place?” Beca asks, tapping against the marble of the counter while Aubrey drops an enormous bag onto the floor and starts moving around rapidly, gathering items.

“Where is Chloe?” she asks, ignoring the all-too-important questions being asked of her. Like, how Beca had just been sitting in silence in the kitchen, drinking coffee, and all of a sudden, Aubrey fucking Posen had been standing in the entryway, glaring down at her.

“She’s sleeping,” Beca asks.

“Go wake her up,” Aubrey says, then pauses, looking seriously at Beca.

“She’s sleeping,” Beca reiterates, because she has kindness and human decency when it comes to people she cares about sleeping. And she is simply annoyed by Aubrey’s presence at this point.

“She has an interview,” Aubrey says, staring back at Beca with an angry twitch in her jaw. “Where she has to be fresh and funny and amusing. It’s for Elle.”

“Fuck off,” Beca says, because it feels like the best response when she’s barely had three sips of coffee. Aubrey doesn’t get to respond, because Stacie flounces into the kitchen with a whole other enormous bag clinking with makeup and smiles widely at Beca. Beca tries to arrange her face into plain-reasonable Aubrey irritation, and Aubrey’s face climbs back into pleasantness.

“Hey Beca,” Stacie says, winking at Beca. “Chloe getting rest after a busy night?”

“Oh my God,” Beca says, slamming the coffee mug down onto the placemat in front of her. She doesn’t even bother giving Stacie a response, just starts towards the stairs, wondering how the hell all the people she knows want to be involved somehow in her sex life.

She grumbles a little bit as she hits the landing, and she pushes further into the house to make her way to Chloe’s enormous bedroom looking out over the yard. It’s lit only by the sunlight, and the shadows created are dramatic around the room.

Chloe is settled on one half of the bed, one arm flung sideways into the space Beca’s only recently abandoned. She looks like all the heroines in her dad’s favorite books, like Scarlett O’Hara level shit. Her hair is sprawled all around her face, but it’s so peaceful and sweet that Beca has half a mind to stomp back downstairs and tell Aubrey to get out. But she knows that’s never going to fucking happen; she and Aubrey would probably start a brawl.

“Hey, Chlo,” Beca says, stepping forward and nudging against the base of the bed. The thing barely moves, it’s so perfect. Chloe mumbles something, rolling over into the sunshine that’s taking up most of the bed, then blinks her eyes open briefly to glimpse Beca.

“Chloe Charlotte Beale! You have a photographer coming over in 45 minutes!” Aubrey yells, clearly halfway up the stairs. Beca rolls her eyes, and Chloe sits up slowly, blinking more.

“Coming!” Chloe yells, and then shakes her head, reaching up to rub her whole face, as if questioning in total her whole relationship with Aubrey and what her life is. Or, that’s what Beca’s hoping she’s thinking about.

“Don’t yell, and put your clothes on now so Stacie can change them!” Aubrey yells back, and Beca just glares steadily at the doorway.

“Hey Chlo!” Stacie yells up too, now. Beca’s eyes are going to actually get stuck in the back of her head like her dad always claimed they would. Chloe slowly climbs out of her bed, standing wobbly in front of Beca and placing her hands on Beca’s shoulders.

“You good?” Beca asks, placing her own hands on Chloe’s ribs while Chloe blinks some more and shrugs.

“Which photographer is coming?” Chloe asks, and Beca shrugs back.

“I was in the kitchen happily drinking coffee when all of a sudden Aubrey Posen was in my face,” Beca says. “So I have no idea.”

Chloe just hums in acknowledgment, pushing her body closer and into Beca’s arms. Her face presses against the side of Beca’s head, and she’s still warm all over from sleeping underneath those blankets.

“It happens.”

“Do you normally just have photographers show up at your house?”

“Well, yeah,” Chloe says, pushing Beca backwards further and further. “I’m gorgeous, you know.”

“Your ego is amazing,” Beca says, rolling her eyes and nearly tripping over her own feet as Chloe pushes her up against the wall and kisses her soundly.

“Beca, remove your hands from Chloe’s pants and everyone come down here!”

“Oh my God.”

-

“This morning I got a call,” Jessica says, sipping her vodka soda and looking down over the menu spread open between them. “From a reporter at Just Jared.”

“What’s that?” Beca asks, drinking her own whiskey sour and tapping restlessly against the table. She’s got a beat stuck in her head that she thinks might be a good backbone for a new mix, and if she could just finish up this meeting, she could get to her mixer before the beat flew the coop.

“What is Just Jared? Beca, you’re so out of touch,” Jessica says, sighing. “They were asking about your relationship status. Apparently you’re in their Friday photo roundup.”

“What’d you say?” Beca asks, humming to the music in her head. Jessica snaps her fingers right in front of her face, and when she jerks her head in annoyance, she catches sight of the seriousness on Jessica’s face. The song drifts away immediately.

“I gave no comment,” Jessica says. “We should talk about this. With Ashley and Aubrey and Chloe. And a real publicist, not your lawyer who took a few marketing classes in undergrad.”

“Dude, you want me to ditch you as my publicist because some weirdo from some…thing asked whether I was dating somebody?” Beca asks, staring at Jessica, whose expression doesn’t shift away from serious.

“It’s a website, Becs,” Jessica says, sighing. “And I’m qualified to handle your contracts, at best, Beca. I’m certainly not ready to handle the worldwide media if they get it in their head that you and Chloe are dating.”

“Can you,” Beca says, flinging her hand across the table and making Jessica sit back a little. “Can you just, you know, quiet down?”

“I have a list of publicists for you to think about,” Jessica says, pulling a sheet from her folder and sliding it across to Beca.

“Are you like, resigning? There’s nothing to do here, we can just, live our lives and be quiet about it,” Beca says, pushing the sheet back across the table toward Jessica, who sighs and tries to push it back. It gets jammed up between them, crinkling and folding.

“You don’t understand, Beca,” Jessica says. “I know you, I know that you don’t want your life to change. But it’s going to, and it’s already started to. We have to figure this out with what’s best for you.”

“I don’t need a new publicist,” Beca says, shoving at the paper until it starts ripping on the side. “We’re laying low.”

“You were at her house during her Elle interview,” Jessica says, and the paper rips a little more as she shoves it towards Beca’s side of the table. “You were wearing sweatpants. I saw a rough cut of the article. And so did Just Jared.”

“You’re being paranoid,” Beca says, and Jessica’s eyes nearly bug out of her head.

“Beca, this isn’t paranoia, this is realism. We need to talk about plans,” Jessica says, and starts to reach, with her other, unoccupied hand, for the stack of papers she keeps in her ever-growing Beca binder. “Like coming out, with a press statement, approved by a real publicist who has a real publicist degree.”

“I don’t need a damn plan,” Beca says. “I’m not going to confirm any rumors about anything. That’s the fucking plan.”

“Have you talked about this with Chloe? I don’t think she wants you to bury yourself in the closet,” Jessica says, and Beca almost wants to throw up at the soft sound of Jessica’s voice, having downshifted from annoyance into concern. The jarring motion of switching from lawyer to friend clearly messes with Jessica too, because she takes a long gulp of her drink.

“I don’t have to,” Beca says, shrugging. “I don’t want to change my life, you’re right. So I’m not going to.”

“You’re being stubborn, Beca. You love this girl, and you’re scared,” Jessica says. “Ashley can draft us a statement.”

“And what does Aubrey think?” Beca asks, and Jessica stares at Beca’s face, squinting.

“What does Chloe think?” Jessica asks, and Beca doesn’t have a satisfactory answer for that. It doesn’t matter what Chloe thinks. Aubrey’s talk is still sitting there in her head. She sits back in the booth, suddenly exhausted.

“I want you to stay as my publicist, if you want to stay,” Beca says, and Jessica sighs, reaching across the table to grab Beca’s hand and squeezing it once. “But I’d get it if you didn’t want to.”

“That’s very understanding of you, you dumbass,” Jessica whispers, and Beca smiles a little. “If I somehow fuck up your career you have to forgive me.”

“I’ll deal,” Beca says, shrugging. Jessica laughs, leaning back in her own seat and looking at Beca carefully. It doesn’t feel like this is over, but maybe it halfway is.

“Are you okay?” Jessica asks, carefully, like she’s worried Beca might tear her head off. It’s a very Beca thing to do, but by this point, she’s ready to move away from the topic at hand and toward something entirely unrelated to her and Chloe’s public persona, something that doesn’t make her want to punch things.

“I’m fine,” Beca says, shrugging and taking a drink. “Just had a beat stuck in my head and lost it.”

-

**THE BELLE OF THE BALL AFTER MIDNIGHT**

by Yvonne Polaski

  
Chloe Beale has just finished two tours that spanned the North American continent, and after a whirlwind three years, is just looking to find a good place to get sushi.

“I still can’t find where my wine glasses are without my manager’s help,” Chloe says, pulling a bottle of wine out of a small wine rack in her kitchen and looking questioningly at said assistant. There’s laughter through the kitchen – Beale’s manager, stylist, and friend, Beca Mitchell (a record producer at 4AD Records and one of the hottest DJs in Los Angeles, who joined Beale on her Pride mini-tour in June), all seem to find every move of Beale’s hilarious.

Case in point: after pouring out glasses for each of us, Beale settles in at her kitchen island and listens as Mitchell starts telling a story from the mini-tour that prompts heavy laughter from the other three, at Beale’s expense.

“When we were in Chicago, we went to this – this tiny bar somewhere in downtown Chicago near our hotel, and we were a little drunk by this point, and all of a sudden, Chloe just started going on and on about how she wanted to go to the Bean,” Mitchell says, her laughter overtaking her storytelling just briefly. She’s referencing the metallic art installation in Millennium Park whose official name is “Cloudgate,” but is known in the area as the Bean thanks to its distinct jelly bean shape. “And all of us were just like, no we can’t just walk to the Bean in the middle of the night while drunk off our ass and during Pride.”

“She pulls stuff like that all the time,” says Taylor Swift, famous collaborator on Beale’s Cotillion. “She’s just like that – very in-the-moment. It’s one of my very favorite things about her.”

Beale is known for a happy-go-lucky demeanor and a candidness that many stars in her position don’t have. She’s honest, maybe even to a fault, and is known for her infinite kindness with her fans. In December of last year, her bonus from Columbia Records for reaching platinum with Cotillion was donated entirely to a mass of charity organizations and hospitals across the country.

She is also well-known now for her famous declaration of her bisexuality on Ellen. When asked about her romantic life, she’s prim and proper – very southern belle.

“I’m happy, I’ll just say that,” she says, taking a long drink of her wine with a sly grin working its way up her face. Everyone laughs at that, too.

One of the most surprising things about meeting Beale in person is her softspoken-ness. She’s a big character, and maybe larger than life at some points, but she’s quiet, respectful, and fills a glass of wine if it starts to look even vaguely low. All of us get heavier-than-required pours of what seems like an expensive white.

“My parents raised me right,” she says. “A restaurant pour is bullshit.”

What’s next for Beale?

“Well, I’m looking for a good sushi place in the area,” she says, laughing. “After that, I’m not sure. I didn’t have a plan for my career before Cotillion, you know? It sort of just happened to me. Not that I didn’t work hard, but it was more like – the things came as they came. That’s how I want to live my life.”

“She was asleep like an hour ago before you showed up, for example,” Mitchell offers, and another laugh rises up around the table.

“It’s true,” Beale says, shrugging without apology. “I can’t plan past an hour or so. So who knows what’s coming next?”

Even if Beale isn’t sure, we’ll all be waiting for her next move with bated breath.

-

“Bad day?” Beca asks, when she walks into her apartment and sees Chloe laying face down on her couch, watching a rerun of The Bachelor. It was funny, and cute, but the fact that she was wearing a full set of athletic wear, including her shoes, indicated that she hadn’t moved in a while.

“Jonas made me run five miles up an incline,” Chloe says, sort of picking her head up to give Beca the side eye. “I can’t move my legs. You’re going to have to sit on the floor.”

“I would die if I had to run one mile,” Beca says, dropping her bag on the floor by her front door and stepping into the living room to put her hand on Chloe’s back. “Is that the price of fame?”

“Yes,” Chloe says, grumpy and annoyed. Beca can actually feel her adoration rise to astronomical levels. “It’s our Faustian deal.”

“I’m glad I never wanted to perform in front of millions of people on the VMAs then,” Beca says, sliding down to the floor and Chloe’s level. As she turns her eyes to the television screen, she feels Chloe press a kiss to the back of her neck.

“Yeah, you’d rather perform in front of thousands of people in the dark,” Chloe says, throwing one arm off the couch and down across Beca’s front. “With lasers.”

“Lasers are cool,” Beca says, and then cringes. Who defends lasers?

“Shh,” Chloe says, right in Beca’s ear. “Allison is making a bad decision with this guy.”

“How could any of them be good decisions when the whole relationship is scripted and filmed?” Beca mutters, and Chloe kisses her neck again as some sort of acknowledgment of Beca’s annoyance at being forced to watch a bad television show.

They watch the end of Allison’s moment with Gil (a terrible name, in Beca’s opinion), and Chloe rolls a little so that her hand moves to the back of Beca’s head, where she starts scratching.

“How was work?” Chloe asks, and Beca sighs, mostly because getting her head scratched feels spectacular. Also because work was crazy.

“One of my interns got a virus into the network,” Beca says. “I think it was this kid named Deaton. And one of the other producers was giving me crap about taking a month off to go on tour. And then Jesse somehow found an old copy of your GQ cover shoot and put it on my desk without me seeing him do it, again.”

“I liked that shoot,” Chloe says. “Did you see the Elle article?”

“Yeah, people keep tweeting me about it,” Beca says. “Some of them were like, scary, too. One was this person just yelling incoherently.”

“Aren’t they fun?” Chloe says, though she doesn’t say it sarcastically the way that Beca would have. It sounds way more warm and kind.

“They’re something,” Beca says. “Jessica asked me about coming out and us announcing our relationship.”

Chloe pauses her movements briefly on the back of Beca’s head, then keeps moving with confidence.

“You know I don’t need you to come out,” Chloe says, and Beca can feel her body curl closer to Beca’s on the couch. “You don’t owe it to anyone.”

Beca wants to tell Chloe about Aubrey’s lecture at Beca about how she was never going to be a good enough girlfriend for Chloe, and how she should just keep it under wraps in light of that. She can imagine Chloe’s reaction, how angry she would be.

“Yeah,” Beca says, shrugging. “She wasn’t saying I have to or anything. She said I might be happier.”

“Well, that’s up to you,” Chloe says, pressing her thumb right at the base of Beca’s neck and making Beca moan. “I’m happy no matter what.”

Her voice is low in Beca’s ear, and she can tell that Chloe has clearly regained some strength in the past few minutes. So she takes advantage of it, and pushes Jessica and Aubrey right out of her mind.

-

“I don’t understand what her costume is supposed to be,” Amy says, leaning over Beca to reach for the round of shots that’s just been delivered to the VIP area. Absurdly, she’s brought Bumper Allen, who is an enormous douche, to 52 Stack to see Beca’s set. “But she looks hotter than the bush up there.”

“I love me some bushes,” Bumper adds, intelligently. Across from Beca, Jessica’s face winces at the terrible statement and at Amy’s loud moan of appreciation while they turn their attention back to each other.

“For the record, the costume is a business suit,” Stacie says, bumping Beca’s other shoulder. “It’s just a bit skimpy. You’ll like it.”

“I’m sure,” Beca says, her eyes being drawn across the room where Jesse and Chloe are dancing to the late DJ. Chloe is an upsettingly good dancer while stone cold sober, a decision made in preparation for this ridiculous performance that everyone keeps chattering about.

Beca’s finished her set maybe an hour ago, and practically everyone she knows has decided to crowd the VIP room, forcing Cynthia Rose to force out all the usual VIPs in favor of two of the best selling artists in the world and their crews. One of Bumper’s bros, some guy named Donald with a great handle on beats, is sitting next to Bumper and texting furiously.

“Did we decide where we were fitting her mic pack?” Aubrey asks, sitting next to Jessica across the tiny table littered with glasses. On Jessica’s other side, Ashley visibly sighs, turning to talk to Emily, who’s hovering behind their couch.

Amy extricates herself from Bumper’s mouth with an audible pop, nearly turning so hard she hits Beca in the head with her head.

“Aubs, you might not have noticed, but this is a club,” Amy yells, waving her hand around in the space between her and Aubrey, which is practically right in front of Beca’s face. “Dance like no VMAs are happening.”

“You can’t just ignore the VMAs, Amy,” Aubrey says, her voice ratcheting up in volume and reaching a higher pitch. Beca winces in unison with Jessica, who widens her eyes at Beca in a question of is this really happening right now.

“We’re putting it on the belt, Aubrey,” Stacie says, clearly trying to placate literally everyone in the circle. Amy’s already been distracted again by Bumper, and Beca half-hears Donald making bump-bump beatbox noises to the tune of the Jaws theme.

“Aren’t we afraid it will get removed after we take the harness off?” Aubrey questions, and Beca sighs, turning her head to look over at Donald, whose body is moving along to the beat he’s making. If she ignores the disgusting sight of Bumper and Amy, she can almost hear a melody forming along to it.

“I don’t think so,” Stacie says, shrugging. “But we can test tomorrow in rehearsal. Let’s just have fun tonight, Aubrey.”

“You’re rehearsing again tomorrow?” Beca asks, and Stacie nods, cocking her head at Beca curiously.

Aubrey looks suitably cowed, for a good five seconds, but she clearly recharges to open her mouth just as Cynthia Rose appears with another tray of shots. Beca reaches immediately for one, along with Jessica, who looks ready to just go to sleep for about two weeks. They bump glasses before they throw the tequila back.

“Wow, this is post-Luke level shot-taking, ladies,” Cynthia Rose says, laughing and looking between Beca and Jessica. “You two good?”

“Swell,” Jessica says, smiling. They had had a two hour and forty minute meeting earlier in the day going over her work during her past contract with 4AD for leverage in her new contract negotiations, broken by a series of phone calls from a whole bunch of LGBT news places wanting to get an interview with Beca. Out had been particularly pushy about it. As a calming measure, she had made one of her interns go and get them cheesecake.

“I don’t know why my emotional well being is always being judged by that event,” Beca says, and Cynthia Rose laughs loudly, placing a hand on Stacie’s shoulder, who laughs too. This apparently draws the attention of Jesse and Chloe, who migrate suddenly to appear on either side of Emily, who jumps with a squeak at their presence. Donald starts imitating the noise, adding it into his music.

“What are we all having a gas about, womenfolk?” Jesse asks, and Beca suddenly stands, nearly pitching forward across the table and into Jessica’s lap. Ashley reaches out in an attempt to catch her, but Amy actually manages to grab her by a belt loop and keep her in place.

“I gotta,” Beca says, and then just doesn’t finish, pushing past the legs of Bumper, Amy, and Donald to push into the backstage area of 52 Stack, crossing through the familiar hallways and avoiding the rapidly moving staff. She pushes sideways into the single bathroom and very suddenly realizes that she’s about to be sick.

The world feels like it’s all smashed into her head, and she hits the ground hard, the pulsing beat of the music shaking the walls around her. She can’t quite breathe after she lets out the first wave of puke, and she tries to gasp but instead throws up more. It’s mostly water and alcohol, so it burns coming back up, and she keeps trying to catch her breath, but it’s not fucking happening.

She finally empties her stomach, sliding off to the side of the bowl and fitting herself between it and the wall. It’s vaguely comforting, but she still feels a little like the world is closing in around her. So she sits and breathes, ignoring what feels like her phone’s rampant buzzing.

It takes five minutes, but Chloe eventually finds her. The door bursts open, and Chloe, resplendent in a miniskirt and heels, catches sight of Beca in the corner of the room.

“Beca!” she yells, which echoes in the tiled room. Beca winces, and so does Chloe, raising her hand up in a classic southern oh my stars gesture to her throat. “Are you okay? One too many tequilas?”

Beca doesn’t quite have an answer. It feels like a lot of things are wrong, but localizing the issue beyond “I’m freaking the fuck out about dating you” is impossible, and saying that out loud when Chloe looks at her like that is impossible too.

Chloe gets on her knees next to Beca, a semi-respectable distance away, raising one hand to reach for Beca’s leg. It’s warm and it pulls Beca into focus a little bit.

“Sorry,” Beca whispers, coughing over the hoarseness of her voice. “Bit of a panic attack. Totally normal.”

“That isn’t really - ” Chloe starts, but then stops, squinting at Beca in accusation. “What happened? Something happened.”

“Nothing happened,” Beca says, swinging her legs closer to her body. “I’m just stressed out. You know. Contracts, production. Stuff.”

Chloe doesn’t respond, just keeps on squinting at Beca as if Beca will suddenly let loose an avalanche of feelings. There’s nothing in this world that has a current lower probability, and so Chloe finally sighs, reaching out to grab Beca’s hand and squeezing it gently.

“Do you want to go home?” she asks, and yeah. Nothing sounds better than that. Going back into the loud club and the VIP room sounds like the opposite of what her old therapist – the one her parents employed jointly after their divorce – would call “self-care” in his too-nice tone.

“Yeah,” she says, finally, pulling her head across the tiled wall to look at Chloe, who smiles softly.

“Okay,” Chloe says, standing up suddenly and tugging at Beca’s hand. “Upsy-daisy.”

“Don’t fucking say upsy-daisy,” Beca says, grunting as she gets pulled up and falls halfway into Chloe’s waiting arms. Chloe knocks her forehead against the side of Beca’s head and rests there for half a second. “Oh my God, there’s still too much vodka in me.”

“Please don’t puke in my Range Rover,” Chloe says, pulling Beca by the hand into the hallway. Emily and Jesse are both loitering around the area, looking suspiciously as if they had just been up against the door trying to listen. Beca glares heavily at them both, but Jesse shrugs with his dopey grin and Emily just stares nervously, clearly unsure of what to do.

“I’m gonna,” Beca says, cocking her head toward the back door where Chloe is getting a valet to bring her car around. “So please drive my car home.”

“Will do, Becs,” Jesse says, launching forward to wrap Beca in a hug. Emily gloms onto her other side, gripping her hand and squeezing tightly. It’s comforting in a sense, but it also makes her head spin a little more. She pulls out of their embrace with a weak smile, nodding at plans for lunch or something.

“What are you doing, Chloe?” Aubrey asks, having apparently found her charge about to leave the building and managing to sound accusatory. Chloe, who’s just been handed her keys, looks at Aubrey with confusion.

“Beca is sick,” she says, reaching for the hand of Beca’s that isn’t occupied with Emily’s hand. It kind of makes Beca feel as if she’s being pulled apart. “I’m going to take her home.”

“Why can’t Emily take her home? There are paparazzi out there,” Aubrey says, and now almost everyone has managed to crowd into the hallway. Amy, Ashley, Cynthia Rose, Stacie and Jessica, and even Bumper have showed up behind Aubrey’s shoulder. Beca fixes her eyes on the sparkly blazer Cynthia Rose is wearing, but it makes her head spin when it glints in the hallway lights

“Aubrey, she’s sick. I’m going to take her home,” Chloe says, her voice hardening. Emily squeezes Beca’s hand, humming something nervously under her breath. Beca focuses in on it, letting it calm her.

“I don’t think you should,” Aubrey says, and Beca watches as Chloe looks over at Ashley and Stacie with a clear what the fuck look on her face. Ashley is looking at Aubrey in abject confusion, and Stacie grabs ahold of Aubrey’s upper arm, distracting her enough that Chloe starts moving, pulling Beca toward the open door. Emily lets go of Beca with one last squeeze, promising to call in the morning.

“Chloe!” is what greets Beca when they step outside. Chloe’s Range Rover is pulled right up to the door, but there are still paparazzi everywhere, hovering around and yelling mostly Chloe’s name, asking her questions.

The valet pushes ahead of Beca and gets her safely into the passenger seat while Chloe climbs into the driver’s side door. Thankfully the security at the club is good enough that the path in front of them is cleared, and Chloe gets them onto the highway almost immediately.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Chloe says, and it’s so quiet in the car that Chloe is whispering. She reaches across the console between them to grip Beca’s hand. “I don’t know what was wrong with Aubrey.”

“She hates me,” Beca says, shrugging. “Sorry for getting sick.”

“Don’t apologize for that,” Chloe says, squeezing Beca’s hand. “I’m sorry she was being a bitch.”

“Not unusual,” Beca says, then lets the silence float around them for a moment before she speaks again. Being away from the cameras and everyone else shifts her anxiety backwards in her mind. “Stacie said you’re rehearsing again tomorrow?”

“Yeah, it’s a crazy schedule,” Chloe says, laughing. “It’s worth it though. I think it’s going to be a great performance. Did Stacie tell you about my costume?”

“She said I’d like it,” Beca says, and Chloe winks heavily, her car zooming through Los Angeles and toward the Malibu hills.

“I hope so,” Chloe says, her voice nearly dropping an octacve and coming out throaty. It makes Beca shiver, and she tightens her grip on Chloe’s hand.

“Me too,” Beca says, and she half-notices her own voice has dropped to match it. Chloe shivers too, the dark outline of her body against the lights of the highway looking beautiful. It makes Beca forget the whole mess in her head, and she sinks into the moment slowly as the night swallows them up.

-

“So why are you not at the show again?” Jesse asks, sitting in his stupid bean bag chair while Beca shovels popcorn into her mouth. They’re watching red carpet pre-show stuff, where some Vine star is interviewing various VMAs guests, his voice squeaking occasionally.

“Everyone apparently thinks we’re dating,” Beca says. Jesse leans backwards in his chair and eyes Beca, up on the couch.

“You are dating,” he says.

“Not publicly,” she says, shrugging and eating more popcorn. She throws one at him, and he manages to catch it in his mouth, chomping down on it as he rolls back to face the television.

I miss you, Chloe’s text says. I could really use your hugs right now.

You’ll be fine, Beca texts back. Chloe appears briefly on the screen as they go to commercial, waving at a crowd who are screaming for her.

“Aubrey told me that I was bad for her,” Beca says, suddenly. Jesse leans backwards in his bean bag again, nearly rolling off the backside as all the beans (or whatever) shift around in it.

“Aubrey’s kind of a jerk,” Jesse says, carefully, in his Beca-handling voice.

“She doesn’t want us to come out of the relationship closet until I can prove myself as a worthy person,” Beca says, throwing more popcorn at his face. None of it hits him.

“You don’t want to come out of the relationship closet either,” Jesse says. “I thought.”

“I don’t,” Beca says, shrugging. “I mean. I don’t know.”

“Very explanatory,” he says, before rolling out of the bean bag and coming closer to her to pick up some of the stray popcorn and settle next to her on the couch.

“It’s really scary,” Beca says. “Being Chloe Beale’s girlfriend, trademark.”

“But you can put up with that,” Jesse says, knocking his fist into Beca’s shoulder lightly. “You’re Beca fucking Mitchell. You’re strong as hell.”

“And we’re back here at the VMAs, and we’ve got Chloe Beale here, about to give a huge performance to open the show! You got any hints for us into what it’s like?”

“Just that it’s a good one,” Chloe says, practically shouting into the mic so she can be heard over the crowd behind them. “Hopefully you’ll love it!”

It looks like she winces for half a second, as she waves to the crowd on that canned line. In the background, Beca can see Aubrey and Ashley watching the interaction carefully. Jesse, next to her, laughs as they can hear someone distinctly yell, “I love you, Chloe!”

“If only they knew, right?” Jesse says, nudging at Beca’s shoulder and laughing. Beca watches as Chloe bids the Vine dude goodbye, rejoining Ashley and Aubrey.

Yeah. If only they knew.

“I think I might ask Chloe about it,” Beca says, feeling a surge of confidence run through her. “About telling people.”

“Good,” Jesse says. “Screw Aubrey. Be strong as hell, BMitch.”

He puts her in what must be a friendly (in his mind) headlock, and she punches him.

 

-

 **WAS CHLOE BEALE LIVE ON THE VMAS?**  
posted August 30th @ 10.34 PM

Listen, I don’t usually watch the VMAs. But my daughter, certified teenage nutcase that she is, commandeered our television to watch them so that she could see Harry Styles and Chloe Beale perform. I had heard of both of them before last night, for the record.

While I know that MTV has played fast and loose with their theories on performing live in the past like, twenty years, they still like to pretend that their performers aren’t relying heavily on backing tracks and the flash of big dance routines to carry them through with sub-par vocals that sound like shit when they’re isolated.

Immediately after Chloe was finished singing, and even before, grown men and other certified teenage nutcases were questioning if Chloe had supplied any live, sub-par vocals at all. Let me be clear, this post isn’t some call-out of Chloe’s singing skills – because she’s actually a great live singer, which I figured out with a cursory search through YouTube for many different instances of her performing at concerts of all different kinds. She’s a great singer! Not my jam, but she should have crushed the VMAs under her Grammy-encrusted foot (according to my daughter).

After her performance, Twitter erupted with all kinds of messages. Messages of hate from Harry Styles fans proclaiming that their golden boy was way better than Chloe, messages of support from her fans claiming that Chloe had done great and had totally for sure sung live, messages from insiders that Chloe is quote exhausted and messages from celebrities who had things to say. Noted sub-par vocalist Taylor Swift, for instance, tweeted out a photo of her, Beale, and Karlie Kloss, noted model who has been on like, every Vogue Magazine ever printed (a statement from my daughter I did not factcheck).

Twitter also had things to say about Chloe Beale’s closeness with DJ/producer Beca Mitchell, who is, according to my daughter, working with Emily Junk and a whole bunch of other great bands on new records? Messages of lesbianism abounded, as a subclass of Twitterdom latched onto photos mined from the dedicated Chloe camera feed (which, what? That’s some Big Brother shit, MTV). I’m not an expert on lesbianism, celebrity, or performing bestselling music to other bestselling musicians, but…

Like, was Chloe Beale live on the Grammys at all?

The big questions of our time.

-

“Chlo?” Beca asks, because, Chloe Beale is standing in her doorway at nearly seven in the morning. Beca’s been unable to sleep, thanks largely to her phone and computer’s insistence on making some sort of notification noise every five goddamn seconds. She’s somehow gained five thousand Twitter followers and they all want to talk to her. Right now.

Chloe had stayed behind at the show to do press afterwards and to present awards and to pack up staff and to go to afterparties – however, she looks stone cold sober and flat out tired when she shows up at Beca’s doorstep.

“Becs,” Chloe says, then pushes forward and practically throws herself into Beca’s arms. Beca almost falls over backwards, but does get the door closed so none of her neighbors go wandering by on their way to work and see Chloe Beale burrowing into Beca’s arms.

Though, according to her Twitter mentions, they might not be so surprised.

“Hey,” Beca says, pulling Chloe back into her apartment and towards her bedroom. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.”

It isn’t okay, which is obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, but it’s the kind of shit Beca’s mom or dad would say, and that had been vaguely comforting at some points in her life. Chloe’s crying, softly, into the joint of Beca’s neck and shoulder. She gets Chloe into her bedroom, finally, and sits down on the bed, pulling Chloe with her.

“What’s wrong?” Beca asks, and while she has a vague idea, it isn’t clearer than her confusion over the night in general. It isn’t clearer than her own panic over her phone continuing to remain lit with notifications.

“I,” Chloe starts to say, and it comes out as some sort of whispery, tearful, croak. But she seems to draw some resolve, gripping Beca’s t-shirt hard and drawing her face from Beca’s neck. “I have nodes.”

It’s too fucking early for this, is the first thought that pops into Beca’s head. She considers saying that, but it’s probably a little crass and definitely a little inappropriate. She knows, of course she knows, what nodes are. She knows what they mean to the paranoid world of singers for certain.

“Okay,” Beca says, then reaches for either side of Chloe’s face, pulling it so Chloe is looking her in the eyes. It’s stupidly timed, but Beca realizes, in an epic moment of ridiculousness, that she kind of loves Chloe’s face, and her, just in general. It kind of knocks her brain off its axis, and she ends up staring at Chloe. Chloe seems to take this as a sign to keep talking.

“I lost my voice this morning,” Chloe says, whispering and quiet and sounding for all the world like someone whose voice has been socked in the cords. “I was doing warmups, and then it was just gone.”

“That’s why…” Beca says, and Chloe nods, ducking her head down again and crying again. Beca keeps her hands on Chloe’s face, rubbing at the edge of Chloe’s hairline. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, Chlo.”

“I lip-synced on national television,” Chloe says, and her voice sounds harsher now. “And everyone knows.”

“You’re sick,” Beca says, one hand sliding down to the base of Chloe’s neck. “I forgive you. And I have had serious fights about audio quality and singing authenticity. Like, really serious fights.”

“I knew something was wrong,” Chloe whispers, then shrugs. “I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t want to let anyone down and now I really have.”

“You haven’t let anyone down,” Beca says, because that’s some actual bullshit. “You’re sick. You just need to get better, okay? That’s what people who care about you want you to do, and then you haven’t failed anyone at all.”

Her phone interrupts her, bursting into another flurry of notifications. Chloe looks over at its place, stuck between two of the books on Beca’s desk, and frowns.

“Just ignore that,” Beca says, sighing. “Everyone in the whole world is tweeting me. It’s normal. Look at me.”

Chloe does, smiling halfway even though her eyes are still teary. Chloe’s hands land on Beca’s thighs, squeezing there tightly.

“Let’s just get better, okay?” Beca says, pressing a kiss to Chloe’s forehead and smiling as wide as possible even though she is really starting to feel the fact that she’s been up for twenty four hours. “I’m right here, I love you, and you’ll be fine.”

She doesn’t notice it as it comes out of her mouth, but she does notice it when Chloe’s eyes widen and her eyes refill with new and different tears. A rapid panic fills her up, and she suddenly really feels hot and kind of like she’s lost the feeling in her hands and feet.

“Can we just…ignore that?” Beca asks, and the look on Chloe’s face is a clear no, though it disappears from view when Chloe lunges forward to start kissing Beca, hard. It’s a wonderful kiss, especially considering the conversation and night that had gone before it. Beca gets knocked backward, and Chloe somehow manages to clamber up astride her, without breaking contact with her lips.

“I love you too,” Chloe whispers when she does break contact, right in Beca’s ear, though her mouth quickly becomes occupied again with Beca’s ear and neck. The warmth that floods through Beca at that kind of makes her eyes heat up, and the rest of the heat settles elsewhere. Her hands clutch at Chloe’s hips.

“This is an amazing shift in mood,” Beca gasps out.

“I’ve been in love with you since you sang with me the first time,” Chloe whispers (it seems now like that’s the best her voice can manage). “Let’s go to bed.”

“Okay,” Beca says, because there isn’t much more else she really could say. She feels similarly, and Chloe’s got her shirt off, and it’s hard to pay attention to anything other than them, this tiny moment in her bedroom.

It doesn’t feel like it’s going to last, but Beca clings to Chloe, and Chloe clings to Beca. And they love each other.


	5. But Now Together We're Alone

**ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE**

This singer has gone around the world in the past two years, and is definitely getting worn down to dirt. Word is that she wants to make a push for a big event coming up, but her health probably won’t let her. Her reps want her to drop her current “gal pal” and get focused. Meanwhile, current “gal pal” wants her to focus on them, and getting in the public eye more.

Singer:

Gal Pal:

[Optional]: Reps or gal pal?

 **verbose99** commented:

      Chloe Beale. Beca Mitchell. And I have to say I’m with the reps on this one – she’s gotta rest from the world tour!

 **quoral** replied:

            this one was too easy. agree re: resting. never would have thought bmitch was interested in publicity though.

-

“Do you think an Instagram post of us vacationing in Bermuda would be a good way of coming out?” Beca asks, after she and Chloe order their drinks. Aubrey’s invited them all to a lunch meeting, which Chloe claims is probably about the issue-they-don’t-talk-about. Beca thinks it’s probably about the other one.

“I would love a vacation,” Chloe says, laughing quietly. She’s been down, of course. Beca had walked into Chloe’s house to find her reading War and Peace.

“We should go,” Beca says, grabbing for Chloe’s hand and then dropping it as the waiter comes back into the room. Chloe smiles at Beca as he sets their drinks on the table, then leaves with a quick nod.

“Are you just trying to cheer me up, or are you actually thinking about announcing to the world that we’re together while you’re wearing a bikini?” Chloe asks, grabbing Beca’s hand again. Beca shrugs. It’s probably a little bit of both.

“Why is Beca wearing a bikini?” Jessica asks, arriving in a flurry of movement. Chloe reaches up to hug Jessica, saying hi in a quiet voice. Beca gets pulled into it as well.

“She’s talking about going on vacation and posting a relationship announcement,” Chloe says. Jessica settles next to Beca and looks at her funny while she starts pulling out her ridiculously large binder.

“What changed your mind?”

“It’s a tentative plan. Jesse told me I was strong as hell,” Beca says. Chloe giggles, sort of, drawing closer to Beca. Jessica literally makes a fake gagging noise.

“Plus, we’re in love,” Chloe says, smiling.

“Oh, at least we can finally admit that,” Jessica says, dropping her binder on the table with a thump. “It’s only been like six months now.”

Ashley walks in next, hugging Chloe and Beca, then kissing Jessica on the temple before sitting next to Chloe.

“Do you know what this is about?” Jessica asks, just as Aubrey walks into the room with a stride that seems to signify that no one else is allowed to talk, and Stacie trailing after her. She waits until she’s in her seat and has assessed all other participants before she begins speaking.

“We need to talk about some things,” is she Aubrey begins the meeting. Jessica, who’s chosen the misfortune of sitting closest to Aubrey, actually winces at the tone.

“I didn’t realize we were having a board meeting,” Beca says, picking up her sadly very small drink and taking a sip.

“Is that an itinerary?” Chloe asks, her voice not carrying very far across the table. Aubrey winces at the sound of it, and Beca now officially wants to punch Aubrey in the face. And she’s only said seven words.

“There is a lot to discuss,” Aubrey says, eyeing the way Chloe’s hand disappears beneath the table near Beca. It’s resting on Beca’s thigh, though Beca’s sure Aubrey views it as a personal affront.

“Like how we need to pick a dress for the Golden Globes for Beca?” Stacie asks, sitting on the other side of Aubrey and drinking from a wine glass that seems pretty small for its big price.

“That’s actually a good point,” Jessica says, pulling open her notebook and jotting something in it. It feels kind of like being at a therapy session.

“Am I going to the Golden Globes?” Beca asks, looking from Chloe to Jessica with confusion. Chloe shrugs, looking happy in her own confusion.

“There’s buzz that Jesse is going to be nominated for Best Score,” Jessica says, adding more notes. Aubrey draws the attention back to her with a throat clearing that sounds kind of more like a growl.

“The first item up for discussion is the current public relationship status of Chloe and Beca,” Aubrey says, gesturing at the named parties as though they are bugs smashed on her windshield. Or, rather, that Beca is. Chloe blinks at Aubrey and Beca just stares as Aubrey’s eyes glare at her.

“What about it?” Chloe asks, smiling and frowning. Ashley sits up a little, next to Beca.

“On whether we should confirm your relationship,” Aubrey says, and Chloe looks over at Beca, reaching for Beca’s hand. Beca continues to stare at Aubrey, who is actually grinning as if she has just murdered somebody.

“Speaking of that - ” Jessica starts to say, but she’s interrupted by Aubrey.

“I think we should keep it under wraps until we’re more certain of your two’s future,” Aubrey says, in a levelheaded tone that indicates to Beca that she’s practiced exactly how to say that without sounding like an asswipe at least twenty times. Stacie looks over at Aubrey in confusion.

“What?” Stacie asks, in the kind of tone that seems to indicate that Aubrey is moving in the wrong direction. Beca is thankful for that, even though Aubrey seems to not care at all.

“Especially considering Chloe’s illness,” Aubrey says, smiling gently at all of them like they’re children. “We want to heal without being bothered by the press.”

“How would being in a happy relationship be bad for Chloe’s press?” Jessica says, leaning forward and looking at Aubrey. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“There would be too much of it,” Aubrey says, shrugging. “Chloe should have time and space from the press. And you should also think of Beca’s career - she’s about to go big, and I would want her to do that authentically,” Aubrey says, nodding seriously. Beca frowns, straightening up as Jessica does the same, seeming to latch onto the same thing.

Chloe sits up as well, and Beca can see Chloe look from Stacie to Ashley to Aubrey.

“I don’t think Beca is dating Chloe for fame,” Jessica says. “I don’t think anyone who knows anything about Beca would say that.”

“I didn’t say that,” Aubrey says. “I was expressing concern that it could be interpreted that way.”

“Aubrey, you don’t - ” Ashley starts, though she’s cut off by Chloe.

“What do you mean, more certain of our future?” Chloe asks, and Aubrey whips her head back around to face Chloe immediately, even though both Ashley and Jessica had looked fit to start arguments.

“I don’t want to complicate either of your public personas by adding a relationship to the mix,” Aubrey says, giving Jessica a pointed look when she says either. Beca rolls her eyes as Jessica frowns.

“Complicate?” Stacie asks, and Aubrey turns to look at her seriously. “They’re dating, Aubrey. Not doing heroin. Literally all of the people at this table are dating each other.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Beca asks, now confused and desperately concerned that she’s missed something.

“Not all of the people at this table are bestselling musical artists whose public personas are important to their careers,” Aubrey says, although she does look like she is considering punching Stacie in the face.

“Wait,” Beca says. “Who’s dating who?”

“Ashley and I are - ” Jessica starts saying, but stops even though Beca is halfway to waving her comment away – of course Jessica and Ashley are dating. “Oh my God.”

“Oh my God,” Beca says in agreement. Chloe starts giggling quietly next to her as Aubrey’s face turns angry and Stacie smiles.

“Bree, you didn’t expect to keep that a secret forever, did you?” Chloe asks, laughing. Beca turns to look at her in total confusion, and Chloe just laughs some more when she sees the expression on Beca’s face. Jessica looks as though her brain is melting out her skull.

“Similar in some ways to Beca and Chloe,” Stacie says, shrugging, placing one hand on Aubrey’s on the table. Beca blinks heavily, sort of in the hopes that Stacie might have better taste than that and she’s hallucinating. “Anyone paying attention could probably see their toners for each other. And if Chloe is resting, no one is going to even have the chance to bother her.”

“Ugh, Jesse got to you too?” Beca asks, now totally disgusted. “He needs to stop saying that word. Is he really going to be nominated for a Golden Globe?”

“Probably,” Jessica says, leaning around Ashley, who is happily eating the appetizers she had made sure were placed in front of her. “We actually will have to get you a dress, though I don’t know how nice it has to be, since he’s just a composer - ”

“I will be blunt,” Aubrey says, interrupting again. Beca laughs, because of course she couldn’t just let something go.

“Were you not being blunt before?” she asks. Aubrey ignores her.

“I think dating Beca could hurt our chances of getting the Super Bowl,” Aubrey says, and Beca doesn’t even know what to think. She looks around the table. Aubrey is, as always dead serious – but Stacie and Ashley look equally as contemplative. Chloe’s face is relatively blank, except for a small crease appearing just between her eyebrows. Jessica looks similarly confused as Beca feels.

“I’m sorry,” Beca says, raising her hand briefly before she realizes she doesn’t need to raise her fucking hand. “Chloe has nodes.”

“The NFL, despite its claims to the contrary, doesn’t want to have their performer be actively dating another woman, especially visibly,” Aubrey says, carrying on in her own world, ignoring Beca as always.

“You didn’t tell me you were going for the Super Bowl,” Beca says, looking at Chloe in confusion. Stacie talks to Aubrey at the same time.

“What happened to resting?” Stacie asks, now letting go of Aubrey’s hand and looking from Ashley, who looks suitably cowed, to Chloe and Aubrey.

“Chloe has nodes,” Beca says, and Jessica nods, proving that she can actually be heard. She keeps talking while she has at least one audience member. “She has to have surgery, not game for the Super Bowl.”

“Beca,” Chloe starts, pressing her hand against Beca’s arm. But Aubrey, as she is wont to do, talks over her quiet voice. It presses Beca’s irritation with the woman up to the ceiling.

“The Super Bowl is a huge opportunity for Chloe’s career, Beca. Don’t you care about that?” Aubrey asks, looking at Beca accusingly. It’s a baldfaced turnaround, one that Jessica, lawyer, has no time for.

“She didn’t say that, Aubrey,” Jessica says, and Beca can see Ashley clearly pull the same move that Chloe did on Beca, placing a hand on her arm. “She was expressing concern for Chloe’s health, which is important to her career.”

It’s a turn of phrase based on Aubrey’s earlier, and it betrays the irritation that Jessica is clearly feeling.

“We’re going to do the Super Bowl,” Aubrey says, with absolute certainty. Beca nearly stabs herself with her fork, which she has sadly not touched, because they started this discussion before ordering their dinners.

“Aubrey, we can’t speak in absolutes like that,” Ashley says, and Aubrey doesn’t seem to care, shaking her head.

“I thought we withdrew our bid,” Stacie says, looking now from Aubrey to Ashley with accusation.

“The only way you could perform in the Super Bowl with a healthy voice is if you had surgery tomorrow, Chloe. You know that,” Beca says, all-out ignoring their drama to talk directly to her girlfriend. Chloe starts to answer, but Aubrey speaks again.

“We aren’t doing surgery, Beca,” Aubrey says, and Beca no longer has the ability to hold onto her temper. She turns in her seat and glares heavily at Aubrey.

“You’re not having surgery, Aubrey, because you don’t have nodes. But you’re hurting Chloe and her career by making her go after the fucking dumbass Super Bowl instead of having surgery that will help her voice,” Beca says, pointing at Aubrey and nearly rising out of her seat. Ashley, next to her, sighs.

“You don’t understand, Beca. You’ve never understood. You are stubborn, childish, and you have no idea what it’s like to be a major public face, and you’re far too scared to ever give it a try, so shut the hell up,” Aubrey says, sounding vaguely threatening. Beca lets go of Chloe’s hand, actually ready to get up and punch her in the face.

“Aubrey, I’d appreciate it if you stopped attacking my client,” Jessica says, and she looks pretty near punching Aubrey as well.

“You can’t just waltz into Chloe’s life and ruin it, Beca. You don’t know what’s best for her,” Aubrey says, keeping on even while Jessica stands up.

“Aubrey,” Stacie says, gripping Aubrey’s shoulder. It does nothing, and Aubrey continues staring straight at Beca, practically sneering.

“I haven’t ruined anything, you fuckwad,” Beca says, standing up suddenly and pointing at Aubrey. “I love Chloe. You clearly care far more about Chloe’s career than her, considering you won’t fucking take the good advice to have surgery.”

“Beca, please,” Chloe whispers, gripping Beca’s hand. Beca squeezes it back, as Aubrey coils up like a snake just about to attack.

“Listen to me, Beca,” Aubrey says, rising to meet Beca. It’s a very godfather-esque moment, each of them on opposite sides of the table. “You’re hurting Chloe by holding her back. You don’t have the commitment, drive, or ambition to be anything approaching her girlfriend publicly or privately. And you certainly don’t care about her more than I do. So, here’s my advice: get the hell out of here.”

Beca stares at Aubrey. Everyone sits in silence, and so Beca looks down at Chloe, who looks up with a neutral expression on her face.

“Chloe, come on,” Beca says, and she half-recognizes that it sounds pleading and childlike.

“Beca, I…”

She doesn’t finish. She glances away for a moment, then blinks back to Beca’s eyes. Her mouth doesn’t open. That fucking seals it, for Beca.

“If this is what I get for trying,” Beca starts. She gives one last look to Chloe and lets go of her hand. Jessica brushes past a protesting Ashley and grabs Beca’s arm, pushing her out of the restaurant. Aubrey finally, mercifully, doesn’t speak, just smiles happily.

They turn the corner out of the back room and walk out to the street only to find paparazzi yelling Beca’s name as they push through them to Jessica’s car, while they ask whether Chloe was still in the restaurant, how they started dating, and when Chloe’s next album is dropping.

-

Emily pauses in the middle of listening to a song, watching as Beca’s phone buzzes for the fourth time in their session. It’s Chloe, like it has been the other three times. Beca presses the off button twice, and it goes to voicemail. Chloe hasn’t left any of those, so it can’t be that pressing a need.

“You should answer her,” Emily says, finally acknowledging the elephant in the room. “You love each other. Isn’t that more important?”

“She could have stood up for me, or for herself. Or for fucking something,” Beca mutters, turning the bass louder on the song, then wincing and turning it back down.

“She’s scared,” Emily insists, sighing. “Nodes are scary, and so is Aubrey.”

“Can we just focus on this album?” Beca asks, snapping loudly enough that Emily winces. Beca sighs, shifting in her seat, before pressing pause on the song. “Look. I just. I can’t handle it right now. I can’t even begin to describe my feelings about literally anything.”

“That sounds like a perfect avenue into songwriting,” Emily says, laughing. Beca wants to laugh too, but she makes a more harrumph type of sound.

“I wish I could do what you do,” Beca says, sighing. “If I could, I’d probably be like an indie artist who only performs in the dark or something and makes people cry.”

“I wish I could do what you do, Beca,” Emily says, reaching out to grab ahold of Beca’s shoulder and squeezing. “You’re so good. And like, I know you’d want to cultivate the image of some jerk, but I know you’d care too much to perform in the dark and only sing songs that make people cry.”

“You’re a nerd,” Beca says, laughing and also trying not to cry a little bit. Emily slides her rolly chair closer and wraps Beca up in a tight hug.

“I’m sorry, Beca,” Emily whispers, and this time, Beca does kind of cry. It lasts for what feels like hours, crying into Emily’s shoulder. Emily makes anxious shushing noises, rubbing at the space between Beca’s shoulder blades, and even though it only helps in minimal amounts, it does sort of help.

“God, I hate crying,” Beca mutters, wiping at her eyes as she pulled away. “Remind me to not do that for like forty years.”

“I’ll try,” Emily says, smiling brightly in her Emily way. “Do you wanna record “Don’t Dream it’s Over” or something? Will that help you feel better?”

“I hate Crowded House,” Beca says, shrugging and settling back into her chair.

“Is that the band?” Emily asks, looking wide-eyed and a bit lost. Beca briefly remembers Emily’s age and groans again, kind of wanting to cry some more. She doesn’t get the chance, because her phone rings again. It’s Chloe, again.

“Why did you not want to just come out and say you two were together?” Emily asks, so sweet and nice, looking at Beca plaintively.

Beca shrugs, sighing.

“I was maybe…ready to,” Beca says, shrugging. “Too late now.”

Her phone rings again.

This time, it’s Jessica.

“Hello?” Beca asks, picking up the phone and sighing heavily. Jessica is actually breathing furiously into the phone, an amazing feat.

“Beca, someone leaked a video of you and Chloe singing that mashup back in Boston,” Jessica practically yells, causing Beca to move her phone a little bit away from her face. “Access Hollywood just called me. Like, I spoke to Billy Bush. It was fucking terrifying.”

“On the Internet?” Beca asks, scrambling for the desktop right next to her while Emily’s eyes widen.

“What the hell? Of course on the Internet, Beca,” Jessica says, breathing hard. “Are you at Sony with Emily right now?”

“Um, yeah,” Beca says, holding the phone up tight to her ear while she clicks onto the first website that pulls up a result. The video starts playing automatically, and it is really her and Chloe, in that bar while she’s wasted, staring at each other. Chloe starts singing, and then Beca joins her, and it’s one of the clearest looks at them she’s ever had. They look like they’re fucking in love. It’s different from the Instagram posts, videos from the tour, and everything else: they’re singing right in each other’s faces. It feels so palpable and damning that Beca’s veins feel like they turn to ice.

Right under the article, there’s a statement from whatever asshole leaked the video, which says, “Chloe Beale and Beca Mitchell one hundred percent were together.”

“I’m going to come get you,” Jessica says. “And get you out of there.”

“Fuck,” is all Beca says, while Emily practically whines as the video keeps playing, tapping along to the beat of the song Beca had weaved together around them that night. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Jessica says. “I know, Beca.”

Beca makes an impulse decision, after Jessica hangs up: she calls Chloe.

She doesn’t answer.

-

 **now i’m in the club thinking all about my baby**  
paradeworker1283

Author’s Note: i promise that i will update my other fic, but i watched that boston video and i cried and in my death this story rose from the ashes. the title is from “just a dream” by nelly because i am a COOL PERSON. Also, these are real people, this story is my wishful thinking (but probably true, lbr) and please don’t sue me or tweet this at chloe beale or beca mitchell.

The first time that Chloe saw Beca Mitchell was at a club, where she had been dragged along by her friend, Fat Amy. She wasn’t a big club person - she preferred to sit at home and read, but Amy had insisted that she go out and see this “wicked good DJ.”

And so she had gone, and she had waited in the VIP section while Amy danced around. When she had finally seen Beca Mitchell appear in the DJ booth, setting up her equipment and looking at on the crowd, it had been dark and hazy in the club. She could make out the barest outline of a rather small girl, whose movements were fluid, exact, and practiced.

It had been clear that she was at home in the booth, fiddling with her equipment. And when the music started, it became more clear than ever that Beca had the same kind of reverence for music that Chloe did: there were times where Chloe would look up from dancing with Amy and see Beca moving with the music in this intuitive, magical way.

Five months later, and they were on tour together and Chloe was certain that she was in love with Beca Mitchell. It had been a quick transition, but Chloe had always been quick to fall in love, and so she didn’t mind too much. What she did mind was that Beca was reticent to express the same kind of feelings that Chloe was feeling - she was equal parts mysterious and fascinating. It was exhausting.

She had been suggestive of her feelings, even on stage - she’d practically set her ass on Beca’s mixing table while singing, and Beca hadn’t so much as blushed. Chloe was starting to think it was a lost cause.

Until Beca Mitchell was staring at her, singing a song on a karaoke stage with her. Chloe was staring back at her, barely paying attention to the song she was singing - Beca was mixing two songs, live, right in front of her. It was the same kind of musical, magical moment that had drawn Chloe to Beca in the first place, the kind of gift that had convinced Chloe to ask for Beca to tour with her this summer.

And Beca was staring at her, her face red, her eyes focused. And for the first time, Chloe felt like she could see Beca and her feelings for Chloe.

The minute they got off the stage, and out of sight of the crowd, Chloe grabbed Beca by the shirt and pressed her mouth to hers.

-

“Why are we going to Disneyland again?” Beca asks, from the backseat of her own car. Jesse is driving, with Cynthia-Rose in the front seat. Jessica and Emily are on either side of her, pressed way too tightly against her.

“It’s the happiest place on earth, girl,” CR says. The radio begins playing Chloe’s song, but Jesse turns the channel so fast that it doesn’t get more than a few notes out. Beca leans to her left, to watch over her shoulder as Jessica texts Ashley furiously.

“Any news on the video leak yet?” she asks. Jessica closes her messaging immediately.

“No ideas,” Jessica says shortly, dropping her phone down on her lap and leaning around Jesse’s seat to ask him if they’re going the right direction. Emily is humming something under her breath, and it sounds suspiciously like “Just the Way You Are.”

“I’m really okay, guys,” Beca says, and no one appears to listen to her. She isn’t really that okay, which is perhaps why no one listens to her protests.

“I know how to get to Disneyland,” Jesse says, nearly smacking Jessica in the face when he tries to get her to stop bothering him. Cynthia Rose laughs her cackling laugh, as the radio starts playing an older song Beca had produced for a rap group.

“Have you tried to call Chloe again?” Emily asks, very softly. Everyone tries to act like they aren’t paying attention, but they all quiet down as Beca tries to reply without being an asshole and bursting into tears.

“No,” Beca says. “She hasn’t called me either, though.”

“She’s been busy,” Jessica says, shortly. “And you’re being stubborn.”

“Let’s not attack Becs just because she can’t handle her feelings,” Jesse says. Beca glares at him from the backseat.

“Yeah, let’s go to Disneyland!” Emily says, all of a sudden quite enthused about their current destination. Beca sighs, settling back in her seat and trying to ignore it when the radio commentator starts talking about her and Chloe just before Jesse changes the channel again.

-

 **HARRY STYLES IS YOUR OFFICIAL SUPER BOWL PERFORMER**  
October 3rd

The National Football League has a storied history of selecting talented, varied performers to play the halftime show of their biggest event: the Super Bowl. The best two teams in the league play the biggest game of the year with the whole world watching. The NFL is committed to providing the biggest performers to match, and today, Commissioner Ward announced that multi-platinum recording artist Harry Styles would be the halftime performer.

“Mr. Styles has been one of the major artists of the last twenty years, from his time as a member of best-selling group One Direction to his current solo career,” said Mr. Ward in a statement from his office. “We are happy to make him our Super Bowl 54 performer and to welcome him to the NFL family.”

Styles has sold over three millions copies of his most-recent album, The Machinery of Night, and has sold almost a billion records in his long career.

“Performing in the Super Bowl is one of the biggest dreams an artist can have, and I’m lucky to have achieved that dream,” Styles said. “We’ve already begun rehearsals, so expect something big!”

Super Bowl 54 will air on NBC at 7pm on Sunday, February 4th.

-

“Why are you wearing the nicest jean jacket you own to go to the store?” Jesse asks, after Beca walks out of her bedroom. He’s sitting in her couch, as they prepare to make an exciting run to Costco on their joint account. They had signed up for it forever ago, just after they moved out west, but they had kept it for convenience’s sake.

“Because Jessica told me I should look nice when I leave the house,” Beca mutters, grabbing her wallet and keys from her kitchen table as Jesse stands up. “Because everyone thinks I dated Chloe fucking Beale thanks to one Internet video and a shitty statement from shitty sources.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Jesse says, even though he’s wincing as he says it.

“Aubrey drafted a statement from an anonymous source saying that Chloe was focusing on her health after a long tour and a bad relationship.”

“Well…fair,” Jesse says, shrugging. “But we’re listening to Jessica now?” Jesse asks. Beca walks past him and out the door, and he follows her dutifully, watching as she locks the door.

“People keep tweeting me saying that all this bullshit is my fault,” Beca says, shrugging. “I’d at least like to look nice if I end up on the cover of Us Weekly.”

“No one ever looks nice on the cover of Us Weekly,” Jesse says, jogging lightly down the stairwell as Beca follows him slowly. “I did see you on the cover of Star, and that looked pretty good.”

“Thanks,” Beca says, nodding at her doorman as she steps out onto the street. She’s happy she has her sunglasses on, because she hears quite suddenly the slight patter of distant photographers. Jesse seems to notice it too, taking a light jog to his car, and popping the door open for her.

“Can you imagine having to deal with that, ten times worse every day?” Jesse asks, rolling his shoulders as he pulls into traffic. “I’m amazed Chlo doesn’t have a breakdown every day. She must have the patience of a saint.”

Beca doesn’t say anything in response, just watches as a couple photogs jog to catch random photos of her as they roll by.

“How are you doing?” Jesse asks, looking over at Beca as they idle in the traffic of Los Angeles. “I mean, really. I know Disneyland probably cheered you up a ton, but you look pretty out of it.”

“I’m fine,” Beca says, shrugging. “I was thinking of going to visit my mom.”

Jesse looks at her kind of funny, before sighing.

“I don’t think you should run away from your problems, Becs,” he says, like he knows things. They take the on-ramp to the 5, and join the bumper-to-bumper midday traffic. “You should talk to Chloe, and go be in love with her. I’m sure she needs support right now.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” Beca says.

“She didn’t pick up your one phone call,” Jesse says. “That’s hardly a sign of her hatred.”

“Sure,” Beca says. Jesse doesn’t say anything else, and Beca is fine with that.

-

“Oh my God, mom, please stop fussing over me,” Beca says, nearly shoving her mother out of her space. She’s just made it into her mom’s entryway, while her step-dad, Allen, is literally stuck outside with her suitcase and stuff while her mother touches almost every part of Beca she can reach.

“I just have to make sure you’re eating,” her mom says, then smacks Beca on the back of the head, prompting a yelp.

“Sweetheart, can I at least get in the door before you two start arguing?” Allen says, gesturing with his hands full of Beca’s bags. Beca tries to move out of the doorway, but her mother does not move.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you were dating Chloe Beale,” she says, stepping way too close to Beca’s face. Beca sighs, because there is literally almost nothing she would like to talk about less. Maybe puppy death.

“I knew when I saw her wearing the hat I gave you on TV,” Allen says, and Beca rolls her eyes, feeling a pang of hope that Chloe hasn’t tossed that hat out of spite or anything. She’s stopped calling, and it’s been radio silent for about two weeks. Two days into the first week, Beca had called her mom to set up this short trip home to clear her head.

“We dated for like, two months and then broke up, mom,” Beca says, trying to brush past the other woman and not succeeding. “It was like, normal twenty year-old stuff.”

“Please, you’re visiting and it isn’t a holiday,” her mom says, before pulling Beca into a massive, crushing hug. “Your heart is broken. This is like that time that that Shrillex man retired for two weeks. You cried for days.”

“Skrillex,” Beca says, correcting her mom. “And I’m fine. I just needed to be away from Los Angeles for a weekend.”

“She’s heartbroken, Allen,” her mom says, leaning around Beca. Her husband hums in agreement. Beca rolls her eyes as her mom steers her out of the doorway so that Allen can finally get in the entryway with Beca’s bags.

“I got tickets to the ‘Hawks game,” Allen says, and Beca laughs, trying to pull away from her mom, who does not let go easily. “If that helps you feel less heartbroken.”

“How many downs are there again?” Beca asks, and he laughs too, reaching out to grab Beca in a hug that feels far less constricting than the one her mother’s only just barely released her from.

“I’m going to be in my workshop,” he says, setting her bags down on the floor and shaking some snow off his shoulders. “If you want to leave your mom’s presence, you can watch from a safe distance.”

“Thanks, Allen,” she says sarcastically, pulling off her coat and putting it on the coat rack while he bumbles his way toward the basement door. Her mom waits about ten seconds after she’s made it to the couch to begin asking her questions.

“Why’d you break up?” her mom asks, sitting next to Beca, far too close. Beca tries to shift away.

“Can’t I at least like, have a drink if you’re going to interrogate me? Also, why does it have to start there? What if I’m tired from my flight?” Beca asks, mostly because she really doesn’t want to talk about it, as she has not wanted to talk about it for weeks.

“Fine, I will get you a beer,” her mom says, standing up and pointing in Beca’s face. “But after that, you’re telling me the whole story. Because you kept it from me, your mother.”

“We aren’t Gilmore Girls, mom, there’s like, a lot I haven’t told you,” Beca says, and her mother tuts disapprovingly at her while she putters her way over to the kitchen. Beca’s phone starts ringing, and it’s Jesse making a weird face that greets her.

“Hey Jess,” Beca says upon answering. “I landed fine and everything, so like, don’t send a search party.”

“Cool, I will not,” he says, though it’s his trying-to-sound-nonchalant voice that immediately spells pain and suffering for Beca, who’s had quite enough pain and suffering for at least the next year.

“What is it?” she asks, sighing as her mother turns around in the kitchen and looks at Beca questioningly, mouthing, is that Jesse?

“Jessica is here, at my apartment. Crying. She says that Chloe is having surgery and that she and Ashley broke up,” Jesse says, prompting a sad sounding sob that is probably Jessica in the background. “Though, maybe not in that order?”

There’s more gibberish from Jessica and a bunch of fumbling noises until Jessica finds her way to Jesse’s phone.

“She told me about Chloe’s surgery, and I was still so mad about how she just let Aubrey walk all over us at that godforsaken dinner, and I just got mad and we broke up, and now everyone is unhappy except for Jesse and Emily,” Jessica mumble-cries into the phone, and Beca rubs at her forehead, feeling the headache she’s been trying to escape come roaring back to life.

“I’m sorry, Jessica,” Beca finally says, as her mother turns back into the kitchen and begins making a different drink, which involves vodka. What a good mom.

“I guess they decided to care about Chloe if she wasn’t going to do the Super Bowl,” Jessica says, then sighs, very, very pitifully. “I really liked Ashley, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Beca says, settling down again in her seat.

Jessica doesn’t answer, just bursts into tears again, and the next person on the phone is Jesse, sounding nearly frantic.

“I’m going to call Emily and have her come over too. Um, have a good time in Seattle? I will keep you updated if anything else depressing happens. Love you, Becs,” Jesse says, then ends the phone call abruptly as Jessica’s crying gets even louder.

Beca’s mom arrives back with Beca’s new vodka drink, of which Beca takes a large gulp, setting her phone face down on the arm of the couch and turning it to silent.

“Chloe’s having vocal nodule surgery,” Beca offers, though it isn’t much of an offer, going by her mom’s look of confusion. “They’re like, little things on the vocal cords. Singers are terrified of them and of the surgery for them.”

“What was wrong with Jessica?” her mom asks, sounding like she might begin baking a batch of cookies to send all the way to Los Angeles for Jessica to eat away her sorrows with. Which has happened before, after that aforementioned Skrillex event.

“She broke up with her girlfriend,” Beca says, taking another big sip of her drink.

“Jessica likes girls?” her mom asks, looking surprised. “Why do you never tell me anything at all? Tell me about Chloe, though.”

“What about her?” Beca asks, in an attempt to delay talking about her. Now all she can think about is Chloe and how scared she must be to be having the surgery, and how fucking annoying Aubrey is, and how much she wants to text Chloe a message of support but not knowing if that’s even allowed or if Aubrey wouldn’t maniacally delete the text or something like that.

“Is she nice?” her mom asks, her eyes wondering. Beca actually laughs, for what feels like the first time in ages.

“Yeah, she’s nice,” Beca says, but softer than she really meant to and at least a billion times sadder than she meant to. Her mom doesn’t respond quickly, and it doesn’t matter because Beca feels herself keep talking. “She’s nice and kind and super funny in this nerd way. She’s pretty much like how she is in interviews. But better.”

“And she’s having nodes surgery?” her mom asks, and Beca sighs, glancing over again at her face down phone before looking at her drink.

“Yeah, she is.”

-

“How many hot dogs do you want?” Allen asks, shuffling his feet back and forth on the concrete floor of the stadium. They’ve been standing in line for what feels like ages, and it only seems longer thanks to the brilliantly loud sounds of Chloe’s voice coming in over the loudspeakers.

“Two,” Beca says. She knows she’s coming off as sullenly short, but some girl in the next line over is trying to surreptitiously take a photo of her, and she’s not into that.

“Did you want a beer, too, Little Miss Sadface?” Allen asks, pulling Beca into his side by throwing his arm around her. She realizes after half a second that he’s pulled her face away from the would-be paparazzo’s view.

“Yeah,” she says, shrugging. “Thank you.”

“Pretty creepy stuff,” Allen says, stepping forward and pulling Beca with him as the line slowly moves. “People taking pictures of you all the time. Can’t imagine what it’s like for Chloe.”

“She’s better at it than I am,” Beca says, sighing. “It’s hard to explain how.”

“I saw her on the cover of one of the magazines at the grocery store this morning,” Allen says. “She didn’t look particularly happy.”

“I think she’s pretty upset about the nodes,” Beca says, shrugging again. They move forward again.

“And not at all because she misses you or anything, I’m sure,” Allen says, nudging Beca in the side. She ducks her head, looking at the concrete ground. “Why’d you break up, again? Your mom tried to explain it to me, but I got confused, and then she started crying about how sad you were.”

“I’m not sad,” Beca says, and Allen laughs.

“Beca, you’ve never visited at random ever before, and I heard you listening to Joy Division last night. I’m sorry, but I’m going to classify you as sad.”

“People can like Joy Division without being sad,” Beca says. Allen laughs again, hugging Beca tighter to him briefly.

She gives it a second, but she tries to answer his question.

“Her manager thought that we should hide our relationship, and she didn’t say anything to dispute her,” Beca says, shrugging. “It sucked.”

“I thought she was like, one of those out-and-proud people,” Allen says. “Chloe, I mean. Wasn’t she the one you threw a party over? Wow, in hindsight…”

“Shut up,” Beca says, laughing a little. “Yeah, she is. I mean, I’m not out or anything, but it just sucked that she didn’t even stand up to Aubrey.”

“Aubrey’s the manager?” Allen asks, and Beca nods to confirm. “Well, if you weren’t out, why would it be bad to hide it? Isn’t that what you want?”

“No, I…” Beca starts to say, then stops.

Allen looks at her with a measured face, his Seahawks hat tilted up so that she can see all of his expression. He’s looking at her with a mixture of compassion and empathy that kind of makes her want to throw up.

“...I just wanted to be with her, whatever that meant,” Beca says.

Allen smiles a sad smile, and pulls Beca into a hug that lasts long enough for Beca to fight off tears.

-

“We’ve decided not to renew your contract here at 4AD Records and with Beggars Entertainment,” John says, stacking his papers over and over before looking Beca square in the eye. Beca stares back, even though she kind of wants to cry a little. Next to her, Jessica squares her shoulders up.

“May I ask why? My client has been very successful for and a loyal employee to the label,” Jessica asks, her voice sounding stern in the boardroom. John looks down at his papers again before sighing, sliding them away from him.

“Has she been a loyal employee?” he asks, finally, and Beca bucks up a little at that, because that is some bullshit – she’s slaved over this company, has built artists from the ground and from twenty pages into the music category on YouTube. Before she can start yelling at John, Jessica’s hand arrives on her forearm.

“Listen, Beca,” John says, smiling. “You’re better than this label. You’re a big fish, who deserves a much bigger pond. And your work over at Epic with Emily Junk has been wonderful, and we all know that you’ve had contact with Columbia for months now. We can’t trust you to not take that chance when they finally give it to you. We don’t want you to not take that chance either.”

It’s a vote of confidence wrapped in distrust, she knows, and it stings to hear it said out loud. He’s right; if Epic asked her tomorrow to join as an on-staff producer, she’d do it.

“We value you as an independent producer,” John says, shrugging. “A lot of your artists swear by you, and we want them to keep putting out great music with your name on it. We just don’t see the point in keeping you in-house if you’re going to be putting your name on other artists’ work. Especially if that artist is going to be the biggest pop star in the world.”

Beca frowns, her heart dropping like lead right down against her rib cage. Jessica’s hand rubs a little on her forearm, and she tries to focus on that, not the impending sense of doom that seems to circle closer around her.

“When’s my pen getting closed?” she finally asks, because she has to say something. It sounds terse and kind of strangled. It sounds like Chloe, telling Beca about her nodes.

“January 18th, when your contract ends. We’re not going to be assholes about it though, Beca, you’re free to leave at your own pace,” John says, and that’s kind of enough of that conversation for Beca. She no longer has to sign anything, so she stands abruptly, looking down at Jessica, who seems to know that Beca can’t handle it.

“John, I’ll get into contact with legal on closing paperwork. Is there anything else?” she asks, smoothly standing out of her chair and staring down the table. John shakes his head, waving them out of the office. Beca barely makes it past the valet and into Jessica’s car before she’s crying. Jessica doesn’t say anything, really, just starts the car.

“Stacie called and told me that her surgery is about to go public,” Jessica eventually says, somewhere on Santa Monica, after Beca’s cried her way through four songs or so. “We should come up with a plan.”

“I don’t want a plan,” Beca mutters, looking out the window at the blue Los Angeles sky, still warm in the end of October. “I’ve had enough of fucking plans.”

“You need one, Beca,” Jessica says, sighing. “You’ve just been dropped as an on-staff producer, and the last major thing anyone ever saw you do was date Chloe Beale, and now she’s getting nodes surgery and she may never sing again.”

“Thank you for recapping the misery that is my life right now, Jessica,” Beca says, rolling down her window and strongly considering climbing outside and escaping into the mountains or something.

“People are going to blame you, Beca,” Jessica says, and Beca shakes her head, rolling the window back up and staring out the windshield as Ryan Seacrest starts up “Clay.”

“She wouldn’t have ever got better if she didn’t have the surgery,” Beca says, listening to Chloe’s voice sing out through the car’s admittedly very good speakers. Beca had upgraded them herself. “I’m not the one putting a laser down her throat or whatever.”

“Do you want me to turn the song off?” Jessica asks, and almost reaches over to turn the dial over to something else, but Beca knocks her hand away.

“No I fucking love it,” Beca says, snapping. “I love feeling like I’m getting shotgunned in the face.”

“Do you want me to call Ashley to ask if you can be there?” Jessica asks, and it’s the softest, most sympathetic that the woman’s ever been – which is saying something, because she’s had to deal with Beca on food poisoning at least four times.

Beca wants to say yes. She wants to come to Chloe’s bedside and say sorry for being stubborn and stupid and letting Aubrey scare her off and letting herself get scared.

“No,” Beca says. “Just take me home. Email your PR plan ideas.”

“Okay, Beca,” Jessica says, and they don’t talk while Chloe finishes singing, and then Beca turns the music off.

-

“So this is how unemployment is treating you,” Jesse says, throwing his arms open as if he was waiting for Beca to rush into him. He leans over to the guard and signs whatever weird sheet he needed to sign to let Beca into the lot. “You’re wearing sunglasses inside now.”

“You would too if you couldn’t go to the grocery store without people taking pictures of you buying ice cream,” Beca says, shrugging. The security guard looks nearly wistful at the thought, and Beca slaps on her guest badge as Jesse grabs her by the shoulders and starts leading her out of the security office.

“You looked great on the cover of InStyle, from what I saw,” Jesse says, rubbing Beca’s shoulder. “Or was it Star? I can’t tell the difference between any of them. Also, how many of those do they put out a week? I feel like I see a new picture of you looking distraught every day.”

“You see me in person almost every day,” Beca says, trying to shrug out of Jesse’s arms and failing. They pass by a tour group, and a number of them gawk as the tour guide points out Jesse as “the man composing David Fincher’s top secret new film, Pike Tower.” Beca hears one of them whisper loudly that she’s Beca Mitchell, and she hears the irritating click of a camera for it.

“How does it feel, being solely and totally responsible for the death of Chloe Beale’s career?” Jesse asks, sliding his arm down from around Beca’s shoulders and gripping her hand. It’s kind of like the old times, in college. When they were dating and never kissed.

“Fucking wonderful,” Beca says, glaring at him through the darkness of her sunglasses. He probably can’t see her eyes, but she hopes he can feel her glare. “Stacie keeps calling Jessica with progress updates. Every time it happens she shows up at my apartment and goes on a five minute rant and then offers to buy me food, like I’m poor now or something.”

“Can she speak yet?” Jesse asks, turning the corner and waving at a random group of people. Beca thinks one of them might actually be David Fincher.

“She can. They don’t know if she’s lost range yet, but the doctor told her that she might not be able to sing above a G sharp,” Beca says, and Jesse turns another corner and arrives at the enormous Sony Studios orchestral building, pushing open the door and holding it open for Beca.

“Welcome to my current office,” Jesse says, waving hello to the members of the orchestra fiddling around on their instruments, warming up. He gives a light push on Beca’s shoulder, pushing her toward the recording booth.

“Look familiar?” he asks, nodding at the recording engineers settled there eating their lunch. They look at Beca with rapidly widening eyes, then start waving. One of them manages to take a huge gulp of food down his throat and starts speaking.

“Oh my God, Beca Mitchell, I’m such a huge fan,” he says, talking very very fast while the other one nods frantically. “Oh my God.”

“Nice to meet you,” she says, and Jesse laughs, patting her on the back.

“She’s gonna be here all afternoon, guys, finish your lunch,” he says, and then pushes her into the composer’s office, where Jesse has stacks of sheet music all around with multiple adjustments all over it. He uncovers one of the chairs by removing a whole stack of books and tossing them in the corner, then offers his desk chair to her.

She settles in it, watching as he fits himself into the smaller guest chair. The computer in the office is on, with a camera feed of the orchestra and notes on the score written there.

“Have you tried to talk to her at all yet?” Jesse asks, and Beca stares at him for a moment before finally thinking to take off her sunglasses. The room is suddenly very, very white all around them.

“I feel like she could try to talk to me, too,” Beca says, and Jesse slaps himself on the forehead, sighing as though Beca is literally the dumbest person he knows. Which would be amazing, considering all the orchestra nerds he surrounds himself with constantly.

“Beca, you’re the one who walked out on her and then didn’t answer any of her calls or texts,” he says, which is kind of reasonable of him, and it kind of burns at Beca’s stomach like acid.

“I wasn’t the only one who was wrong,” Beca says, shrugging. Jesse sighs again, louder and more insistently, as if it would somehow provoke Beca to produce her phone immediately and text Chloe right then and there.

“This is why we broke up, you know,” Jesse says, looking Beca up and down as if whatever it is should be clear to Beca without any explanation. “Your stubbornness, inability to admit you’re wrong, and also how you weren’t sexually attracted to me at all.”

“I’m not saying I was totally right, dude, but she didn’t back me up at all,” Beca says, shrugging. “Can we just, not talk about it? I’d rather talk about why we broke up, if that gives you any perspective.”

“It does,” Jesse says, then steeples his fingers in contemplation as he looks Beca over. “Did Jessica put out feelers on getting you on staff with Epic?”

Beca sighs, wanting to put her sunglasses back on and wanting to pull her jacket tighter around her shoulders.

“They’re gunshy now that I’m connected to Chloe and her trip under the laser knife,” Beca says, shrugging and trying not to think about her career prospects right now. Her old boss at Residual Heat had called and offered her back an assistant’s position. That was the best her Grammy Award winning self could get in the wake of a vocal surgery. “Everyone is, apparently. I’m lucky they haven’t kicked me off of Emily’s record, and that’s basically finished anyways. Apparently someone actually said that to Jessica.”

Jesse whistles in appreciation, then looks up at the clock.

“Well, if you want to hear a cool-ass orchestra play some tension-filled music for a David Fincher film, lunch break is up,” Jesse says. “I’ve got you a seat behind the percussion. And also, you can’t turn around because the film is playing on the wall behind them.”

“Fine with me dude,” Beca says, shrugging off her jacket and following Jesse back through the office. The recording dudes give some more waves to Beca and she waves back, trying to smile more than last time. They seem to appreciate it. The stool up against the wall is indeed behind the percussion, and she sits at it while Jesse climbs to the front of the room, picking up his baton and getting everyone’s attention, half-yelling notes to different sections.

When the music finally starts up, it’s tension-filled as promised. The violins and drums are mixing and matching while different instruments layer around in the score. It sounds great, and Beca settles in, following along with the music and tapping the beat that Jesse’s baton traces out in the air. It’s interesting, to watch him work, like it always is. What she does is so different from this, so on the fly and not so measured.

She kind of loses herself in it as they score a big chunk of the movie, moving through section after section and mood after mood. She closes her eyes, letting the sounds waft over her until she feels like she’s buried underneath them. Before she even knows it, the session is over, and the orchestra members are packing up, and Jesse is coming towards her, smiling brightly.

“How’d you like it?” Jesse asks, poking at Beca’s shoulder over and over until she smacks his hand away.

“I loved it,” she says, deciding to give an honest opinion so the puppy dog look on Jesse’s face doesn’t go away. “One of the sections is stuck in my head, with the timpanis.”

“You and your drums,” Jesse says, laughing at her. “Do you want to do happy hour? I can just grab my stuff and we can bounce.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Beca says, and he yelps out some noise of excitement, dashing back towards his office to get his stuff and her coat. But the beat remains stuck in her head, and she finds herself hitting it against the stool and humming out different melodies against it, probably looking like an idiot.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

-

The dude on the plane who sits next to her keeps staring at her, alternating between looking at her face and then looking at her computer. He clearly recognizes her, an assumption only confirmed when he goes to the bathroom halfway through the way-too-long flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta and she sees the Star magazine shoved into the seat pocket. She can only imagine the garish headline and grungy photo of her in there, and it makes her retreat further into her work, fiddling with a group of mixes that all blend together and what Jesse respectfully called “moody.”

LAX had been crawling with paparazzi as was customary – today Beca had been really confronted by them, her sunglasses and headphones firmly in place while she pulled her suitcase through the terminals and safely made her way onto the plane. She couldn’t quite hear them, but she could only assume their words were intrusive and annoying.

But Beca had pushed through, arriving at her gate just in time to be boarded quickly and without too many signs of a panic attack. Jessica had tried to persuade her not to leave town again and to try to have meetings with record execs; Jesse had claimed he could use her help with the score; Emily wanted to add at least seven songs to her pretty much complete record; Cynthia Rose had offered a full out concert at Jabberjaw to keep Beca in town.

But, Los Angeles had become a bit too much for her, and she felt confident in admitting that. Chloe’s face was everywhere, and Beca couldn’t bring herself to stop driving down Sunset to avoid the billboard for some designer with Chloe’s face all over it. She couldn’t stop going to the grocery, where Beca’s face played into the mix and everyone wondered over Chloe’s health. She couldn’t stop going on Twitter, where people bothered her with lyrics to Chloe’s songs.

So, she ducked out and decided to go to her dad’s house for Christmas down in Georgia, for once. The further she got away from L.A., blending beats and songs into an echo-y set of songs, it was easier to ignore what was happening.

She tries not to think about how she knows Chloe is in Georgia for Christmas too. The paparazzi had been happy to remind her.

But the dude next to her clearly was trying to get in the way of her buzz; he nearly hit his forehead on Beca’s headphones at one point when they hit a patch of turbulence. What could possibly be interesting about her music mixing was beyond her, but she could tell she’d be subject of another Twitter meltdown by the time they hit the ground and the dude whipped out his phone to start sharing things with the world.


	6. Together Our Star Will Never Die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beca's mixtape is inspired by a real one. AKA, it is a copy of one. Here it is: http://isosine.bandcamp.com/

“Well, it’s...it’s kind of dark, Becs,” her dad says, finally pulling Beca’s headphones off and setting them gently on the island kitchen. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Beca says, pacing back and forth. She grabs for the computer and pulls up the mix on her program. It’s just playing into its silence, but she rewinds the last track to listen to the layers she pulled over the original vocal, trying to pick out whatever had bothered her this time.

“You’re a little squirrely, honey,” her dad says, but Beca ignores him, bobbing her head and singing along to the lyric quietly, trying to catch whatever it is. “These songs are kind of sad. This is more sad than your mom said you were.”

“You’ve always said that about my music,” Beca says. “It’s good.”

“I didn’t say it was bad,” her dad says, very gently, as if he’s speaking to a child. It’s exactly how Cynthia Rose had sounded on the phone when she called to tell Beca that it was totally cool if Beca wanted to pull out of the New Year’s Eve bash at 52 Stack. Beca had almost thrown her phone through the wall, especially when, after she hung up, there had been a reel of tweets remarking to Beca about some thing Chloe had tweeted, whatever the hell it was.

“I need you the most,” her computer blares as Beca pulls up the song to fold it into one of the tracks. She sings along as she tries to find spots to fit it in, picking spaces in the beat to slide in that devastating beat, that whiny where are you now.

“I always wondered where you got the music genes from,” her dad says, somewhat conversationally, sitting on the stool in the kitchen and sliding a coffee mug toward her. “By the way, did you sleep at all? Sheila said that she saw your light on when she left for work at five in the morning.”

“I slept fine,” Beca says, ignoring a text from Jessica that includes a link to Just Jared, with the distinct URL of “lets-talk-about-chloe-beales-tweets” attached to it. Beca is not fucking interested in talking about Chloe Beale’s tweets. “I assumed that I was adopted until I was seventeen, so I guess that’s where I got the music genes from.”

Her dad laughs, his scratchy, warm laugh. Beca gives a reflexive half-smile in response.

“You should put your own vocals in,” he offers, suddenly, and Beca finally looks away from her computer to stare at him incredulously. While the idea is obviously ridiculous, it is the first actual constructive comment he’s given about her music, ever. “You’re a good singer, and I think you feel these things. Might as well just go all out, right?”

“I’m not a singer,” Beca says, then pauses the recording to click on the link Jessica’s sent her. The tweet from a couple hours ago is right up at the very top.

I gave you faith, turned your doubt into hoping, can’t deny it. #recovery #mytunes  
- **Chloe Beale** @bealechloe

“You’re not anything but you, Becs,” her dad says, picking up his newspaper and staring Beca down. She looks up, because, what the fuck kind of psychobabble bullshit was that?

“You need to stop reading Sheila’s weird self-help books,” Beca says, scrolling through the page for half a second before she realizes that it’s a waste of her fucking time.

“I think you’re too worried about how things look is all,” he says, finally hiding his face behind his paper under the weight of Beca’s glare. “You can make however many mixes you want with other people singing what you want to say, but why don’t you just say it yourself and own it?”

“I’m a producer, dad. That means I produce other people’s music,” Beca repeats, closing her laptop and staring at his newspaper, where there is, of course, a breakdown of Chloe’s tour video release on the front of the Variety page.

“Well, not to be rude, but you’re kind of whatever you want to be, right now, right? I think you defy labels,” he says, shrugging. It stings a little, but it doesn’t hurt any more or less than looking at the cover of Chloe dancing exuberantly on the front page.

“Thanks for reminding me of my unemployment,” Beca says, slumping forward and settling her arms on the island. Her dad reaches around his paper to pat her hands.

“Well, you can always come home, honey,” he says, laughing a little. “And whenever you get annoyed with me, you can go to mom’s. And you know, ping pong back and forth. Keep running away from your problems.”

“Sounds great,” Beca says, and her phone gets hit with another avalanche of tweets coming in, because, of course, Chloe is so bored that she’s tweeting at least once a goddamn hour.

“How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?”  
- **Chloe Beale** (@bealechloe)

“You should probably talk to her,” her dad says, and Beca realizes he’s put down his newspaper to watch Beca react to the tweets rolling in, pinging noises out of her phone.

“I don’t think she wants me to,” Beca says, shrugging and sliding her phone across the table to him. He looks at the tweet for a moment, considering it, before he gives a slight laugh.

“Doctor Zhivago. You didn’t tell me she was a nerd,” he says, sliding the phone back to Beca and picking up his coffee. Beca sighs, getting rid of the notifications as they rolled in.

“She studied Russian literature in college,” Beca says, tapping ignore when a text from Jesse comes in with a screenshot of the tweet. “You’d like her.”

“She wants to talk to you. No one tweets out Doctor Zhivago at random, Becs,” he says, then reaches for her laptop, pulling it open. “And you should record a vocal track for this.”

“Mom didn’t make me do anything when I visited her, you know,” Beca says, glaring over at him. He shrugs.

“Well, Beca, I’m sorry to say this, but I know your neuroses because we’re similar people. Your mom probably fed you as much food as possible to avoid your sad face. She’s very nice that way.”

“I better not wake up to find The Secret straight from Sheila’s library on my bedside table tomorrow morning,” Beca says, and her dad laughs again. This time, Beca laughs with him.

“No promises, Becs,” he says, reaching out to tap at her hand. “Listen, Beca. I think you would be much happier if you talked to her.”

“I’m fine with wallowing,” Beca says, tapping randomly at the audio track on her mixing program.

“Well, of course you are,” he says, laughing. “But I think you’d be more fine if you’d just get out of your own way and call her. And don’t say that you’re not in your own way, because you clearly are. I know you, Beca.”

“I was stupid, sure,” Beca says, shrugging. “I don’t want to come out to the whole world and change my whole life just because of a girl, either.”

“Did Chloe ever ask you to be anything but you?” he asks. “Because if she did, then sure, fine. Keep making depressing music. I’ll keep listening to it.”

Beca sighs, leaning backwards in her chair.

“Life is always changing, Beca,” he says, shrugging. “You shouldn’t be afraid of that.”

“You aren’t exactly great at dealing with change either,” she says, striking out unfairly. Her dad sighs, and Beca sighs too. “Sorry.”

“You’re right, Beca,” he says. “I wasn’t.”

Beca watches her dad, and he watches her.

“You think I should call her, and record a vocal track,” she says, finally. He smiles, and nods.

-

Chloe answers on the fourth ring. Beca wishes she could be surprised.

“Hello,” Chloe says, though it comes off more like a question than a statement. Her voice is a bit scratchy, a bit quiet. It reminds Beca of all the times she heard Chloe’s voice just like this and thought nothing of it.

“Hey,” Beca says, fiddling with the stapler sitting on the desk in her room, the one she had painted with black chalkboard paint when she was fifteen. Sheila had snuck in at some point in the past two days to draw a motivational saying from The Four Agreements, along with a Christmas tree.

“I didn’t think you’d call again,” Chloe says, softly. Beca wants to cry, suddenly. She clears her throat to try to push that feeling away

“I wasn’t going to,” Beca says, sighing. “But I realized I was being an idiot. I made this mix...and I just. Well. I wanted to check in.”

“Send it to me,” Chloe says, and Beca starts to add get an email together. “Are you okay? Stacie said you were here in Georgia.”

“Yeah, I’m with my dad for Christmas,” Beca says. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” Chloe says, and her voice is so soft and quiet that Beca can feel how not okay she is. “I’m okay.”

“Do you want to…” Beca starts to ask, before she laughs at herself. She focuses on the computer screen in front of her. “This mix is going to sound sad and mean to you.”

“I’m really sorry, Beca,” Chloe says, and her voice actually breaks. Beca winces. “I didn’t know Aubrey had talked to you. Stacie yelled at her for about three hours in my hospital room when we found out from Jessica. I should’ve said something.”

“Chloe, come on,” Beca says, rubbing at her eyes. “I was stubborn and stupid.”

“Well, I like that about you,” Chloe says, and Beca can see the smile on her face without even trying. She can hear music start playing from Chloe’s side.

“I’m sorry about the Super Bowl,” Beca says, even though she’s not really that sorry.

“It’s okay,” Chloe says. “Harry deserved it. Did you know that his album title is a reference to Howl?”

“You’re a nerd,” Beca says, and she tries not to sound too fond. She does not succeed.

“I like this,” Chloe says. “You should put it up.”

“Do you want to come over, after Christmas? You know, hang out…be friends? We’re not that far away from each other, are we?” Beca asks, cringing at how eager and stupid she sounds. Chloe laughs, just a little.

“Yeah, of course,” Chloe says.

“Sheila won’t be here, so don’t worry about that,” Beca says, and Chloe laughs again. It makes Beca smile.

-

“You released a mixtape in the middle of the night, Beca,” is what Jessica begins her phone call with, nearly yelling. “You released a mixtape in the middle of the night on Christmas, Beca!”

“What time is it?” Beca asks, blinking as she tries to get her eyes to focus on the alarm clock tucked onto the bookshelf across the room. It had been implemented so that she would get to school on time in high school – she’d have to get up to turn it off. It had failed to work. “What time is it there?”

“It’s four the fuck in the morning in Los Angeles, Beca,” Jessica says. “I just got woken up because about seventeen reporters just called me.”

“I turned my notifications off,” Beca says, sitting up blearily and taking a gulp of water from the glass on her bedside table. Her phone is buzzing in her hands, up against her ear, and once she sees that it’s Emily, she lets her into the call with Jessica.

“Beca! Are you singing on this last track on your mixtape?” Emily practically squeals, and Beca reels away from her phone as Jessica seems to focus briefly on what Emily is saying, delayed from raging against Beca’s imperiousness.

“She sings?” Jessica says, and Beca can hear the clear sounds of the last track bleeding through the phone on Jessica’s end. “Oh my God, Beca.”

Emily carries through on the sentiment, yelling out, “You sound amazing, Beca. I’m crying a little bit.”

Through the phone, Beca can hear Benji say, “She is actually crying.”

It makes her smile. Her phone starts ringing again, and this time, it’s Jesse. She throws him into the call too, because as many people as possible between her and Jessica’s fury is great.

“Bec, are you okay?” Jesse says, bursting in with his familiar energy. Emily seems to feed off it, blocking Jessica out of conversation and focusing on Beca’s emotions, which she doesn’t actually want to talk about. She had said what she wanted to say on the tracks.

“Beca, are you insane?” Jessica yells, right over whatever nonsense response Beca was going to give. “I wish we never fucked and I mean that?”

“That hurts my feelings, Jess,” Beca says, standing up and heading over to the window in her bedroom that looks out over the backyard. It’s strung up with ridiculous, entertaining-type fairy lights that Sheila surely got out of Good Housekeeping or something. It reminds her, unfairly, of Chloe’s backyard, and she shakes her head, turning over to her desk.

“It’s clearly not how she feels when you listen to the whole tape, I think,” Emily says, taking over the role of defending Beca while Beca tries to shake out the cobwebs of sleep and focus on this conversation.

“It’s like The Four Seasons, Jess,” Jesse starts to say, but Jessica cuts him off with a shrill, irritated, interjection.

“Do you think the readers of TMZ know the semantics of a Vivaldi symphony?!” she says, and Beca sighs, tapping at the bobblehead of Walt Whitman her dad had given her after she had come out as “something other than straight” in the middle of a gathering with Sheila’s extended, southern family.

“I don’t care what they think,” Beca says. “I’m tired of thinking about what other people think. I didn’t used to care about that.”

Everyone is silent for a moment in response to that.

“Did your step-mom give you a self-help book again?” Jesse asks, and Emily laughs her cheery laugh.

“What about what Chloe thinks, Beca?” Jessica asks, and Beca stops tapping, staring forward at the wall in front of her desk, decorated with band stickers and photos of Skrillex.

“She’s already heard it. She liked it,” Beca says, and Emily squeals so loudly that Beca drops her phone.

-

**Lesbian Makes an Emotional Mixtape to Give to Ex-Girlfriend, Accidentally Gives it to the World**

posted December 25th @ 11:15am

Beca Mitchell, after opening gifts on Christmas Day, gave the whole world (and TMZ) a gift by dropping a mixtape on her website without warning or notification. It’s simply called 12:00 (she released it at midnight), and it’s the exact kind of shit you made when you broke up with your girlfriend when you were fourteen and you wore black for three weeks in a row. Except better, because she’s a professional musicmaker person.

The whole thing is great, but the real shocker track is the last one, a devastating cover of Daughter’s “Love.” Mitchell, a person who can sing, sings on the track. I listened to it drunk on Boxing Day, and cried my eyes out. The tape moves pretty much through the stages of grieving, until it’s just fucking balls out sad.

Chloe Beale, who keeps tweeting suspicious things that many believe to be somewhat maybe connected to Mitchell while she recovers from vocal nodule surgery, had this to say: Merry Boxing Day, everyone! Am I doing it right? complete with that emoji who has his tongue stuck out. What could it mean?

The people at People have a theory:

We feel the same way, Chloe! She chooses to take the high road and ignore Beca’s mixtape, but throws in an emoticon who shows her real feelings. Sources in Beale’s camp say that she’s furious that Mitchell made a private break up very public, and that she’s heartbroken. Meanwhile, Beca has picked up some buzz from record execs. When asked, a producer at a major record label had this to say: A week ago, she wasn’t very high on our list to get signed, but this tape is so good that we feel like we have to pay attention now.

She can sing, but we’re pretty upset that she threw Chloe under the bus to do it. We’ll keep you updated on the Bechloe saga as news rolls in!

Putting aside the practice of reading way into the movements of celebrities who do all the same shit we do, just in front of millions of people, let’s posit this theory: maybe Chloe was just wishing people a happy Boxing Day?

Anyway, we hold out hope that Beca and Chloe will figure this shit out. The next youngest famous lesbian couple out there is Cara DeLevigne, and St. Vincent, and fans of either person don’t know who the other one is.

-

Beca almost falls out of her chair in the sitting room when she hears the doorbell ring. She’s been sitting there for an hour, obsessively checking her phone. The last text there is from Jesse, who is saying something about chilling the fuck out. She is not chill.

The other last text is from Chloe, saying that she’s on her way.

Her dad and Sheila are out doing some sort of Boxing Day brunch with friends, which Beca had heavily recommended they go to. Her dad had smiled a lot through the whole interaction, and had also made a comment about not having anyone over. Like she was sixteen.

She vaults herself out of the way-too-squishy chair and dashes over to the door. Once she gets there, she tries to gather herself up to face her ex-girlfriend. Who she just released a mixtape for.

Chloe smiles when Beca swings open the door, and gives a small half-wave. It’s a little bit like forgiveness, because Beca feels like she might start crying as she pushes open the screen door and lets Chloe into the house. By the time Beca’s put way too much time into closing both doors and locking them, Chloe’s made it halfway into the entryway, where she’s looking up at a collection of school pictures of Beca.

Sheila’s mixed them with words like LOVE and FAMILY, because that’s just the type of person Sheila is, but Chloe is smiling wider.

“Hey,” Beca says, pretty awkwardly. Chloe glances over at her.

“Hey, Becs,” Chloe says, her voice still sort of scratchy. It sounds better than the phone call, but it’s still a bit of a shock to hear it so quiet and restrained. Beca definitely is not going to cry about this.

“Thanks for coming,” Beca says. “Sheila left me some breakfast to feed you with. There’s a ton of bacon.”

Chloe follows Beca dutifully further into the house, and Beca tries not to let it bother her that they’re so far apart. Even when they weren’t together, Chloe had always been all over her, and the absence of it is jarring.

“How was your Christmas?” Chloe asks, dropping her bag on the counter and taking the plate Beca hands her. It’s the kind of shitty conversation that Beca fucking hates, but it’s all her fault anyway. So she tries to participate.

“It was good. Sheila gave me this book about like, the five love languages? I don’t really get it, but whatever. Dad gave me a new set of lossless cables, which was at least something I actually wanted,” Beca says, then shrugs. “Um, what about you?”

“My dad got me this sweatshirt,” Chloe says, gesturing down at the thing she’s wearing. It says I would rather be sleeping. Beca snorts. “I mostly get gag gifts. Andrew gave me a little reindeer statue that pukes up candy.”

“That’s…sweet?” Beca asks, assembling a meal on her plate and staring down at it as she tries to convince herself to eat.

“I brought you a gift,” Chloe says, reaching into her bag and pulling out a smallish box. Beca can’t stop the rush of tears to her eyes this time, and blinks ferociously as she accepts the box with a shaky hand. “I heard about your contract when I was in the airport, on my way here.”

“I’m sorry about…not calling you and not answering your calls and being so stupid about everything,” Beca says, holding the box and really, really trying not to cry like an idiot. Chloe smiles at her wanly.

“It’s fine, Beca,” Chloe says. “We all survived right? And we’re friends again, so it all turned out okay. Now, open your amazing gift, from me, your amazing pop star friend.”

Beca smiles and pulls open the packaging to find a little gift box that she pops open to find a stunning, airport gift shop worthy t-shirt. It quotes Al Capone, who says, “there are no gangsters in Chicago.” Beca laughs, and also cries, which is embarrassing.

“I thought it was funny,” Chloe says. Beca lowers it down, back towards the box, trying to subtly wipe away her tears. It does not escape Chloe’s attention, Beca can tell, but the other girl doesn’t say anything.

They sit in a bit of silence now, as Chloe eats food and Beca stares down at the table.

“I don’t have anything for you,” Beca says. “I can make you something, though.”

-

**OMG! Beca Mitchell just released a song on her blog, and you’ll NEVER believe who’s singing!**

DEC 27 11:00am

Did we trick you? We bet you thought it was a track featuring Mitchell’s ex, Chloe Beale, who’s recovering from throat surgery. So far, it definitely doesn’t look like the lovebirds have reconciled, because Beca just uploaded a cover of Andrew McMahon’s song “Canyon Moon,” and it’s heartbreaking.

The saga of the Bechloe relationship has been a crazy cool musical one, and this is just another addition to the list. According to Mitchell’s note on her upload, she decided to release the song thanks to the support of her friend Emily Junk (see her in our December issue for celeb spottings!) and her rumored on-again, off-again composer boyfriend Jesse Swanson. But we can see it for what it really is: a swipe at Chloe for breaking her heart.

When reached for comment, representatives for Beca insisted that Beca was “simply moving into a new phase of her career.” We all knew she could sing thanks to that beautiful video of her and Chloe singing that made the rounds earlier this year plus that other heartbreaking mixtape she put out recently, but we’re glad to get an official release!

We couldn’t go without asking Chloe’s representatives about the music. They said that Chloe was focused on recovering from surgery – we’re hoping she gets well as soon as possible so we can get a reunited Bechloe and maybe even a duet!

-

Beca hasn’t unfollowed Chloe on Instagram. That’s what Jessica begins their meeting with, along with a tall, double rum and coke and her now-enormous binder. The last few months have doubled and tripled its size. Beca briefly considers getting her a digitizing system for Christmas.

“You also haven’t unfollowed her on Twitter,” Jessica says, tapping at the table absentmindedly, as a new song by Bumper plays on the loud radio of the bar they’ve set up at. It’s getting harder for Beca to go to all the old places they used to go, and so they’ve had to head a little outside their comfort zones. “And she hasn’t unfollowed you, either. Which means she’s still in love with you and you should get back together.”

“We just started being friends again,” Beca says, shrugging. “I don’t think my social media choices are a good way to measure whether we should get back together. ”

“Is this what you two do at these meetings? Get drunk and talk about your career?” Emily asks, leaning forward to grab some peanuts from the bowl their waitress had thrown in front of them.

“Does this seem like it’s about my career?” Beca asks, waving at Jessica as though there’s a big sign over her head saying person who meddles in Beca Mitchell’s love life. There isn’t one, but there should be.

“I mean, she’s right. Chloe is still in love with you. She keeps tweeting out sad song lyrics,” Emily says, waving her hand at the waitress to get her attention and placing an order for a Cosmo. “This is great. I wish my meetings with my publicist were like this.”

“The sad song lyrics aren’t about me,” Beca says, rolling her eyes, and taking a drink from her Manhattan. “She’s recovering from surgery and is sad that she can’t sing.”

“Not about you,” Emily says, scoffing at Beca while she tries to sort out the stack of papers in front of her. They look like some sort of contract, but it is not at all clear to her where to start reading to figure out what for. “You’re the delusional one. Plus, you knew what sad songs I was talking about! That’s adorable.”

“People retweet them at me,” Beca says, muttering. “It isn’t amusing.”

“Oh,” Emily says, suddenly becoming toned down. “That is kind of mean.”

“What was the most recent one, though?” Jessica asks, blinking at Emily like she’s trying to remember something. Her fingers are tapping louder along with the music, and Beca is enjoying the beat. “It had something to do with canyons, like “Canyon Moon.””

“I’d jump a canyon just to get where you’re going,” Beca says, finally giving up on reading the contract and blinking at Jessica. “It’s from a song I remixed once. Called “Ghost.” Other choice lyrics, according to people who tweet at me, are “you’ve got me chasing promises on the horizon,” and “if you aren’t for me, why do I breathe so slow?”

“That’s really mean,” Emily says, patting Beca on the back as she takes another sip of her drink. “Twitter is mean.”

“What is this thing?” Beca asks, ignoring the mean thoughts she has about the people of Twitter while Jessica sorts around for new things to pull out of her binder. Emily’s cosmo shows up, and she takes a gleeful drink of it while squinting at Beca’s weird contract thingy.

“It’s a contract to perform at the Super Bowl winners’ afterparty,” Jessica says. “You were the first choice for DJ.”

Beca’s heart kind of jumps around in her chest, for a number of reasons. Next to her, Emily almost climbs out of her seat, squealing in excitement while Beca flat stares at Jessica, who’s in full business mode, staring right back.

“The Super Bowl! Oh my God!” Emily practically yells, and Beca places one hand out to try to stop the girl from bouncing up and down in her seat. She calms down, but not before wrapping Beca in a quick, tight hug and squeaking in her ear.

“The Super Bowl afterparty,” Beca says, and Jessica shrugs, taking a prim sip of her drink and continuing to watch Beca.

“The Seahawks are doing well this year,” she says, and Beca rolls her eyes, then fixes them on the wall behind her while she keeps talking. “I know it’s a little awkward, Becs, but this is a cool opportunity.”

“Do they want me to sing?” she asks, sighing, looking down at the contract in her hands. It’s massive, filled with legalese from the NFL. The NFL who Chloe had apparently desperately wanted to perform for.

“I asked, and they said it was up to you. And that’s not all,” Jessica says, and then pulls out another stack of paper.

“I got a call today,” Jessica says, pulling out a huge, huge stack of papers and dropping it in front of Beca. “From RCA Records. They want to sign you to Ultra Records for a first album and then graduate you to RCA for a second. Productions, like Calvin Harris and Avicii, and your own songs.”

“What?” Emily yells, actually standing up in her seat and hitting her thighs on the table, yelping in pain. “Oh my God, Beca, oh my God!”

Beca winces in appreciation of her pain, but tries to keep focused as she stares at the sheaf of papers in front of her. It has a massive red “Do Not Sign” label across its face, but it does have the classic RCA logo, the Ultra logo, and a huge Sony Music Entertainment logo dashed across its cover. It’s not a joke.

It’s not a joke. Her first urge is to pull out her phone and call Chloe, which is just sad. She tries to shake it off.

“Wow,” is what she finally says, because there’s nothing else she can think to say. This is exactly what she’s wanted for years, what she’s worked for. A contract to produce and work on albums with access to the whole Sony Music Group – that was fucking insane.

“You can work with me for real! I could finally give you my songs! You could meet Skrillex at a party! You could work with - ” Emily starts yelling, then stops, very abruptly. Jessica actually winces, very obviously, and Beca can feel her face do it too. “I mean. You could work with a lot of people. Beyonce! And Harry Styles!”

“How did this happen?” Beca asks, slowly, looking up at Jessica, who is looking at Emily as if she’s shot a puppy. Emily is shrinking under her gaze. “They didn’t want me a month ago.”

“They said that your covers and tapes were great,” Jessica says, then looks straight at Beca. “And that someone told them to go after you.”

“Beca, this is amazing,” Emily says, kind of whispery, and so, so excited. And Beca is so, so excited, looking at those logos splayed across the page, looking at the other two contracts underneath it. She wants to hear Chloe shriek in excitement in reaction to it, the way she would when Beca would play a mix she had never heard before. Fucking Christ.

“Yeah,” Beca says, smiling. “It is.”

-

Her phone rings suddenly, as she’s settling into her new office at one of Sony’s music buildings. Whoever had picked it out for her had a wicked (read: cruel) sense of humor, considering she could see a portrait of Chloe holding her Grammy from her office door’s window. The guy leading her to her office had actually looked at it and then turned to look at Beca’s office location with a sad pat on her shoulder.

It wasn’t as hip as 4AD’s offices had been, but she already had a chunk of artists at Ultra to look at and work with, and a mandate to develop one new artist over the course of the year. Jesse had come over earlier to decorate her office with a photo of him smiling and pointing, and besides that, the only things she had in her office were a computer, a phone, and a boring desk chair.

But her phone was ringing, and she looked around, as if someone could actually see her not answer her phone. No one could, but it felt wrong to not answer her phone the first ever time it rang. So she did.

“This is Beca Mitchell,” she says, half-nervously, as if she’s never had to answer a phone in her life. It’s pretty fucking embarrassing.

“This is Devin at the security desk,” says someone apparently named Devin, who works at her security desk. “Someone named Stacie Conrad is here for you, but you don’t have anyone scheduled today. Should I send her in?”

Beca’s heart practically drops through her stomach and onto the weird carpeted ground. She has a moment of deeply wanting to just hang up the phone instead of answering and saying no, but she taps on her desk for a few seconds, looks out her office door and sees Chloe’s happy face, accepting her Grammy.

“Go ahead. Thanks, Devin,” she says, quietly, and Devin makes an affirmative noise. It doesn’t feel like longer than ten seconds that Stacie pushes open her office door with a guest badge on, gesturing backwards at the portrait on the wall with a wry smile.

“Hey, Beca-meister,” Stacie says, leaning against the door after it closes. Beca assumes it is because she doesn’t have any guest chairs yet, and not a move of intimidation reminding Beca that for her to leave she’d have to go through Stacie. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Beca says, looking to the portrait of Jesse on her desk for strength to handle this time in her life. “Um, not to be a dick or anything, but why are you here?”

“I wanted to say congrats on the new gig,” Stacie said, smiling and stepping away from the door to stand right in front of Beca’s desk. “And I was also wondering if you had a dress to wear to the Golden Globes.”

Beca blinks, and then squints at Stacie, trying to figure out if this is all legit or not. Stacie smiles even wider, tapping the desk.

“Aubrey was a dick to you,” Stacie says, sighing. “And I’m sorry none of us told her to shut the fuck up. I can’t apologize for Ash or Chlo, but she is my girlfriend and I had the best chance of getting her to lay off, and I’m sorry I didn’t. I miss you, Becs. So can I like, be your stylist for a little bit?”

“Jesse hasn’t picked a bow tie yet,” Beca says, looking down at the portrait again to avoid confronting the emotional weight of whatever the fuck Stacie’s just thrown at her. Stacie fucking squeals, clapping excitedly like a seal.

“I’ve never gotten to pick out clothes for a dude!” Stacie says, and forty minutes later, Beca is being ushered into a boutique of some designer whose first name is Monique and last name is something she can’t pronounce but that Stacie pronounces like she has a marble in her mouth.

“You’re very short,” the person they’re talking to says, eyeing Beca up and down. “We will see what we have.”

“Um, thanks?” Beca says, as the woman rushes into some mystical back room, leaving her and Stacie in the weird lounge with a bottle of champagne and ice. Stacie settles on the couch, popping open the bottle and pouring both of them glasses. “Dude, I’m not paying for that, right?”

Stacie laughs, patting the seat next to her and leaving Beca very anxious that she’s paying for the bottle of champagne.

“So, you’re a like, pop star now,” Stacie says, nudging Beca’s shoulder when she sits down. Beca actually laughs, out loud, taking the second champagne glass and chugging half of it down. “How does it feel?”

“I don’t know,” Beca says, shrugging, looking around the weird room and trying to not feel small against it, trying to beat out the feeling of claustrophobia. “I can’t go to the grocery store wearing sweatpants without someone tweeting it at me. And people keep asking me to come to Brazil, even though I’ve only put out one song and it’s a cover. And people keep tweeting me lyrics to “Just a Dream,” actually.”

“Aubrey actually punched a wall after she saw that video leak,” Stacie says, laughing like that kind of display of rage is very amusing to her. Beca doesn’t laugh, just kind of awkwardly chuckles. “Ashley drove her to the hospital while I tried to deal with Chloe.”

Beca glances down at her champagne glass and her shoes beyond that, trying to think through that series of words without feeling anything. It doesn’t work, but maybe it looks like it does.

“I leaked the video, you know,” Stacie says, giggling. Beca stares at her.

“What the hell?” Beca asks, and Stacie laughs even louder at her.

“You were kind of a shithead, you know,” Stacie says. “Aubrey was a bitch, and Chloe was stubborn. But you let them be that way.”

“It’s a familial habit,” Beca says, sighing. “I’m trying to say sorry.”

“With mashups of Justin Bieber and One Direction,” Stacie says, turning to eye Beca full on. It’s been ages since that woman’s disappeared into the back. Beca’s concerned that maybe Stacie just brought her here to lecture her. “It’s working, if that helps you feel better.”

“It does,” Beca says, but thankfully, the woman comes back at the perfect time, interrupting the discussion and distracting Stacie with a myriad of dresses and a whole selection of bow ties.

-

**TRANSCRIPT OF JESSE SWANSON’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR BEST SCORE FOR THE _DREAMMAKER’S DAUGHTER_**

JS: Wow! Wow, wow, wow. This thing is crazy! Um. I have to thank, four billion people before they play me off the stage with my own music, but all I can think is, “Wow!” But, uh, Hollywood Foreign Press, thanks! You’re awesome! And my great orchestra, you were awesome too, and obviously Greg for picking me to do this great movie. My mom and dad! Hi mom and dad! My best friends, Benji, Jessica, Emily, CR, and most especially, the greatest ex-girlfriend I’ll ever have, Beca Mitchell, who has been my biggest supporter while pretending to hate me at all times. And I think you’re – oh come on, stop playing that, I wrote that! That isn’t cool, man! Whatever, it’s gorgeous, so free publicity. Beca! Thanks for being my date tonight, but I’m pretty sure you and I both will have way cooler dates next time we have to go to one of these things. And also, I’d like to thank my dog back home, Denver! You’re the best, dude! Okay, okay, I’ll leave!

-  
There’s a knock at the studio door as Beca is going over some of the tracks she’s been working on with a demo singer for her album. Her album – that’s still tough to get used to. When she turns around, Chloe is standing there, waving and smiling at her. Beca gestures her in, trying to shake out the nervous feeling in her hands.

“Hey, Mr. DJ,” Chloe says as she saunters in and sits down next to Beca, her voice stronger since Christmas. “Turn the music up.”

Beca turns the music up, dutifully, and watches Chloe listen to the track. It’s a generic love track, a bit of a dancey undertone with a thumping bass beat that Beca’s been staggering all over the place. She’s just beginning to like it, and Chloe seems to nod her head along.

“What are you doing here?” Beca asks, as the song falls apart to just vocals, signifying where she’s stopped. Chloe sips at her tea and looks around the recording studio with a bit of a wistful stare.

“I had a meeting,” Chloe says, shrugging. “I figured I’d see if the brand new signee and Super Bowl afterparty performer was working down here.”

“Who told you?” Beca asks, looking back to the computer, trying not to watch Chloe’s beautiful face. Being friends was stupid and hard.

“My Twitter followers,” Chloe says, laughing a little. Beca twists her face up into a bit of a smile – her Twitter followers are rambunctious and a bit crazy, as far as she can tell. “And Ashley. Plus, I recommended you.”

Beca stops fiddling with the bass line and looks at Chloe. Chloe smiles at her, and sips some more tea.

“You’re a special kind of crazy,” Beca says. Chloe shrugs. “I’m sorry that I screwed everything up. Emily says I should keep apologizing.”

Chloe laughs again, and Beca smiles at the sound, clear as a bell.

“We’re friends, Beca,” Chloe says. “I’ve already accepted your apology.”

“Emily says that that doesn’t mean anything,” Beca says, shrugging. Emily had actually said to keep apologizing until Chloe made out with her, but that was not about to be a topic of discussion right now.

“I love Emily,” Chloe says. “But I promise you it does mean something. Now, play me something else.”

Beca does.

-

“I might shit myself,” Allen says, leaning over the railing of the suite Beca’s been given seats in by Sony and nearly losing his hat. The Seattle Seahawks have indeed made it to the Super Bowl, and are playing against the Kansas City Chiefs. Beca’s dad slaps Allen on the back to try to knock it off his head, giggling when Allen jerks backward forcefully. It’s kind of cute when they play nice.

“I hate the Chiefs so much,” Jesse says, leaning around Beca and joining their conversation. He would have made such a nice husband, if Beca had found the way he kissed to be in any way appealing.

It’s about to be halftime, and the teams are in a deadlock, and though Beca vaguely understands how nervous a position that is for her step-dad, she’s enjoying the experience. Jessica, Emily, and Beca’s mom are all laughing together over something, while Mrs. Junk, Benji, and Sheila are talking about Turkish carpets (for some reason).

On Beca’s other side, Chloe is leaning forward to talk in Stacie’s ear. It’s the first time they’ve been out in public together, and she’s already seen numerous twitter notifications celebrating this event. She’s trying not to let it get to her, and it’s mostly working. What is getting to her, however, is that Chloe’s wearing Beca’s Mariners hat.

Allen had barely let a second pass between Chloe’s arrival in the box and his raising an eyebrow at Beca. She had studiously avoided his attention to this fact while everyone began fawning over Chloe, who was smiling and talking louder every day.

“Why are they such an awful team?” Allen asks, and Jesse shrugs. He’s a Broncos fan, which Beca is told means that he’s united with the Seahawks in wanting the Chiefs to lose.

“Is it supposed to rain?” Jesse asks, and Beca laughs at his rather small attention span. He’s looking up at the clouds, which do look rather imposing. Behind Beca, she hears Aubrey answer him.

“The radar indicates that it will rain after the game, which is unfortunate. Harry would love for his performance to be a wet t-shirt contest, I’m sure.”

Aubrey’s irritation had been rather clear since her own arrival, and she hadn’t exactly spoken to Beca, but she also hadn’t been an outright jerk to anyone but Harry Styles.

“He would look good in a wet t-shirt,” Jesse says, musing. Beca stares at him. “It’s true! Don’t look at me like that.”

“He would, it’s true,” Chloe says, tuning into their conversation.

“Can we all just focus our energies here?” Allen yells, and Chloe laughs at him, giving a big whistle for the Seahawks. He seems to approve, nodding at her.

Beca tries to ignore Choe’s arm resting against hers on the armrest between them. She doesn’t succeed.

-

“I’m going to puke,” Beca whispers, and Emily, who is, in fact, with Beca in the bathroom of the afterparty’s hotel, shakes her head violently.

“You aren’t going to puke,” Emily says, very forcefully, in a way she rarely talks. “Beca Mitchell, you are the coolest, strongest person I know, and you are going to go out there and perform your new, cool songs for all those people. Especially Chloe, because it is really cute that you are so in love.”

“Was that your inspirational talk?” Beca whispers back, her voice still not climbing above the range her nervousness has gifted her with. “Because it wasn’t helpful.”

“Listen, it isn’t often that your hero is so nervous they’re going to puke,” Emily says, and Beca stares at her for a moment. Emily rolls her eyes.

“I’m your hero,” Beca says, and Emily shoves her, right toward the door. The emcee nods at Beca on sight, and even though she tries to shake her head that no she is not ready, the intro music she picked begins playing, and he yells out, “Everybody, here’s the main event! Beca Mitchell!”

Emily shoves her straight onto the stage, and Beca is handed her mic immediately. The lights on the stage are thankfully the cool gels that clubs use, but they pull the spotlight on her as her cue to start singing comes on. And she’s sung before. Of course.

She can see Chloe, tucked into a booth off to the side, where Beca had recommended they sit, still wearing the hat. Jesus fucking Christ.

“They say you’re a freak when you’re having fun, say you must be high when you’re spreading love, but we’re just living life and we never stop, we got the world,” Beca sings, plunging into the song, a cover chosen simply because it’s a great party starter. The heavy beat thrums out across the stage and she makes her way over to her set up to start mixing, singing where needed, adding accents as she bridges to “Parade.”

Chloe’s face shifts from happiness into some reticence, turning to glance over at Stacie, who has actually gotten on the table of their booth, dancing. Several of the still sweaty and covered-in-beer football players have gravitated near them.

Beca keeps pushing, watching Chloe through every song, trying to say things as she plays through the songs on her mixtapes and new ones. She never seems to lose interest, or get upset – which is better than nothing. But it isn’t great, either, and Beca doesn’t want to let her go without throwing her very last ring into the arena. So she scraps her original ending, and cues up the new song, the one she and Emily had just barely finished demoing in time.

She grabs ahold of her mic, and starts talking.

“So this next song – my last song, sorry,” Beca says, smiling and wiping away sweat when the crowd actually makes an audible noise of disappointment. “Is actually my first single! And it’s about a lot of things. You don’t care, right? But hey, shoutout to Emily, my best friend, for writing me a million damn songs and singing this one for me. This one’s for you!”

She takes a breath, and starts the track.

“Take a look past the innocence, take a step back to yesterday,” Emily’s voice sings, clear and high, and backed up by a multiplier on the vocal. “When life would move slower, we would never grow up. All we knew that love was for when we’re older…”

The buildup is almost too long for Beca to bear, but the heavy sound of the strings track and the distinctive sound of the almost-drop bring her comfort, and so does Chloe’s face, which is locked in, a smile growing on her face.

“This is our story that we could take back some day, our hope if only that we could take back some…” and the beat drops, hard, and loud, and Chloe very nearly jumps out of the booth and onto the floor, she starts dancing to it. Beca laughs, and keeps singing. Keeps singing.

The lyrics aren’t crazy complicated, but the song had been exactly what Beca wanted to say: let’s take it back. Even Aubrey looks like she likes it; the drunk football players look like they like it too, heaving their heads up and down to the beat.

When it’s over, the whole crowd cheers so loudly that Beca feels like she could fall over. She sets the mic back in its holder, throws out a loud thank you, and she trots off stage into the waiting arms of Emily and Jesse and Jessica, who are screaming.

She hopes Chloe isn’t screaming, for the sake of her voice, but Beca hopes Chloe knows that song was for her.

-

“Stop trying to fix that,” Stacie says, turning in her seat to swat at Jesse’s hand. He keeps fidgeting with his tie while they wait on the commercial break to be over. Beca is trying to explain the way she mixes beats to Ashley, crossing conversational lines with them, and Ashley swats at Stacie for interrupting.

“You just try to find songs that match thematically or at the same BPM and throw ‘em together,” Beca says, shrugging, trying to adjust her cleavage so that she doesn’t fall out of it on camera. The dress Stacie had forced her into was, absurdly, more sexual than Chloe’s was, which didn’t seem fair.

Chloe leaned backward and almost knocked her head into Beca’s, without apology.

“You make it sound like the easiest thing in the world, Becs,” she says, then turns to look at Ashley. “She’s just better than us, Ash. Forget trying to learn.”

“I can teach,” Beca says, trying to sound affronted. Jesse and Chloe both say, “No, you can’t,” in response at the same time.

“Beca, sit up,” Aubrey says, eyeing Beca’s chest. Beca sits up immediately, because as much as she does not want to obey Aubrey’s orders ever again in her life (considering it had fucked it up so much), she really, really did not want to have her boobs come out on television, as previously mentioned.

“How did you break the tape?” Stacie asks, fully turning around in her seat and leaning over it to start touching Beca’s chest and applying new tape to keep the dress fully affixed to her body. Beca blushed, and tried to look around as if nothing weird was happening. Her eyes landed on Chloe, who was watching the movements of Stacie’s hands with interest. Chloe seemed to notice the attention on her, however, glancing up at Beca’s face.

The look there reminded her of a year ago, in the stupid bathroom in the back of this stupid theatre.

“Ugh, I love the Grammys,” Emily says, happily bouncing in her chair and patting Beca on the arm over and over. “Look at Jay-Z and Beyonce over there. Look how great they look.”

“You all look great too, my messy children,” Stacie says, with obvious frustration as she finally manages to make Beca’s situation look natural and not like the dress was very nearly glued to her body. “I should have accepted that job offer from NASA when I had it.”

“I hate Florida,” Aubrey says, and Stacie cocks her head to the side, as if to say, I allow that. “Beca, when does your single officially drop, by the way?”

“Tomorrow, why?” she asks, and Aubrey smiles and shrugs like she has caught the canary and it’s been brutally mutilated.

“Just wondering. Congratulations,” she says, and Beca half-smiles back and says thank you. Aubrey had made an obvious and concerted effort to be kind to Beca, in the few times they talked.

“I can’t believe they’re dating,” Jesse whispers, side-eyeing Aubrey and Stacie as they giggle over something nefarious. Chloe gets pulled away by a PA to head backstage to present the final award, waving goodbye to everyone and brushing past Beca’s arm as she heads up the aisle.

They’re interrupted from their banter when the host comes on for about five seconds and introduces the next set of presenters, who promptly hand out two Grammys for useless categories, and then promptly head back to commercial break, with the promise of a new performance from Taylor Swift.

“Five bucks she performs “We are Never Ever Getting Back Together,”” Jesse says. Emily immediately leans in to disagree.

“Never. She does a cover, or a collab. She hasn’t released anything in the last two years,” Emily says. “Oh my God, what if she sings “Love Story?””

“Why would she sing “Love Story?” It’s even older than his song,” Beca says, shoving her thumb straight into Jesse’s bicep, where he grimaces.

“I like this idea of a collab, though,” Jesse says. “She did have a squad once.”

“Her squad can hear us,” Beca says, waving when Cara DeLevigne turns around and looks at them. The other girl’s eyes are very focused on her momentarily before throwing her a big thumbs up. It’s a weird moment.

“She was into you,” Jesse says, whispering. Beca hits him flat out this time.

“I love her and St. Vincent,” Emily says, clapping a little in excitement. “I love love. Thirty bucks she does “Love Story.””

“You have got to let go of “Love Story,” Em,” Beca says, but before she can expound on the absurdity of that, the cameras start swirling around and the distinctive opening guitar of “Love Story” starts playing over the Staples Center’s loudspeakers. “What the fuck?”

“We were both young when I first saw you,” Taylor sings, looking righteously good. There’s a whole theatrical medley that follows it. It involves many people in costume in many different set changes. At one point, there’s a whole beach scene and then some wolves come and Taylor runs into darkness?

“This is better than Broadway,” Emily whispers, and Jesse actually gasps in shock at her words.

Taylor runs through most of her musical history, ending on a victorious sounding return to “Mean.”

“Hey, y’all,” she says, waving to the crowd, which is clapping for her extremely loudly. “I want to welcome a friend of mine to the stage. She’s got a surprise for you!”

For half a second, it feels like Taylor Swift’s laserlike blue eyes look directly at Beca. Then the stage falls dark, and when it comes up again, Chloe is standing there, looking out on the audience with real excitement across her face. Beca immediately is aware that a cameraman has made his way to her, she can see him from the corner of her eye – but she can’t help it. She stands up when Jesse and Emily do, as the whole crowd roars its approval.

“Thanks, Taylor,” she says, and her voice sounds so sweet and strong in the microphone that Beca kind of wants to cry. “I have a new song for you.”

“When tomorrow comes, I’ll be on my own, feeling frightened of the things that I don’t know. When tomorrow comes, tomorrow comes, tomorrow comes,” she sings, sounding as clear as a fucking bell. Beca turns to stare at Emily, who has the sense to look sheepish, and shrugs, giving a smile to Beca.

Chloe launches into “Flashlight,” the song that she had demo-ed with Emily so fucking long ago that she had almost forgotten about how great it was, how Emily had said it wasn’t a song for her. Jesus Christ.

“I got all I need when I got you and I, I look around me and see a sweet life, I’m stuck in the dark but you’re my flashlight, getting me getting me through the night…”

By the end of it, she’s crying, and of course, that’s what ends up all over her Twitter feed that night.

-

“Don’t you dare,” Beca says, as Jessica reaches into her enormous fucking binder and pulls out a photo of Beca crying from legit two days ago.

“I have this framed already, but I will happily take another copy,” Jesse says, reaching for the photo. Jessica relinquishes it and stares at Beca the entire time. Next to Beca, Emily is grabbing for it as well, squealing.

“You’re a monster,” Beca says, glaring at Jessica. Jesse is taking a selfie with the photo now, a process she tries to intervene in by swiping at it. He pulls it out of her reach.

This was allegedly supposed to be a PR meeting. So far, it had been two minutes of ordering drinks and now, humiliation. Jessica smiles, in a slightly creepy way.

“So, when are you and Chloe getting back together?” Jessica asks. Beca rolls her eyes, grabbing for her drink when the waiter arrives, pulling it out of his hand even before he’s ready. She takes a big gulp as the rest of them get passed around. Emily finally grabs ahold of the photo and promptly begins crying, wrapping an arm around Beca’s shoulders and squeezing.

“Have you talked to her since the night of the show?” Emily asks, wiping away tears and dropping the photo on the table so she can wrap her arms fully around Beca in a bear hug.

“Yes,” Beca mutters, patting Emily on the arm. Jesse is smirking at her, like he knows that Beca was up until two in the morning talking to Chloe on the phone last night. Which he does not. Because she’s told no one.

“I don’t know if I can go through you two getting together in an extended way again,” Jesse says. Jessica rubs her eyebrows at the very thought.

“What about Jessica and Ashley? Do you have any plans for that?” Beca asks, nudging at the binder and pretending to rifle through it. She sees a print-out from Tiffany’s and stops, because good lord.

“Beca, they’re already back together,” Emily whispers, right in Beca’s ear. She blinks a few times, then looks at Jessica, who is legitimately smirking.

“What the fuck?” Beca asks.

“You have the observational skills of a small, blind cavefish,” Jesse says, reaching across the table to pat her hands.

“I assume that’s why you haven’t noticed that Chloe is waiting for you to make a move,” Jessica says, gathering her papers and making them orderly after Beca’s rifling through them. Emily is now rubbing Beca’s shoulders, which is nice and also claustrophobic at the same time.

“I have been making songs about her for like, a month now,” Beca says. “I cried! On national television!”

“She sang a song with the reigning queen of love songs on national television about you,” Emily says, shrugging when Beca turns her glare on her.

“The ball is in your court, Becameister,” Jesse says, taking a big gulp of his beer and grabbing for the photo again to take a photo of it. Beca snatches it out of his hands before he can and crumples it up. She throws it at his face and thinks for a second, before sighing.

She thinks about the way Chloe laughed at her as she tried to say goodnight last night. She thinks about how much she wanted to hear that laugh right next to her in bed, again.

“What should I do?” Beca asks. Emily yells so loudly that people turn their heads to stare at them. Jessica starts pulling out a whole sheaf of papers.

“Thank God,” she mutters. Beca rolls her eyes.

“Probably stage a whole concert and dedicate a song to her and tell her you love her and come out,” Jesse says. Emily nods quite enthusiastically. Jessica frowns, waving the suggestion aside.

“As fun as that would be to organize,” Jessica says, in a way that indicates that it would not be fun to organize at all, “Chloe probably doesn’t need a grand big statement. She liked you when you were stupid and unable to express yourself.”

“She still likes you,” Emily says, patting Beca on the back reassuringly. She hadn’t really needed reassuring, to be honest.

“I would have preferred a big, magical moment,” Jesse says, shrugging. “Can we get some chips? I really want chips.”

Beca stares down at Jessica’s binder and starts to think of a song.

-

“Beca? What are you doing here?” Chloe asks, swinging the door to her house open. Beca had had to place a frantic phone call to Stacie asking if Chloe would even be home, and after Stacie had finished yelling in excitement, she had said yes. And so she was here. At midnight. With a flash drive.

“I, uh,” Beca says, then starts over. “Well, I have something for you.”

“You couldn’t post it on your website like the last one?” Chloe asks, but she’s smiling. She lets Beca into the entryway, walking into the kitchen, where the lights are all on. “Do you want something to drink?”

“No, I’m good,” Beca says. “Can I borrow a computer?”

“This song better be good,” Chloe says, giggling. She grabs a computer sitting down on the island and slides it across to Beca. There’s a stupid essay about Doctor Zhivago sitting out open on it, and Beca laughs too.

“It’s not a song,” Beca says. “I should have like, called. But I worked on this all night, and I wanted you to hear it.”

Chloe doesn’t answer this time, just looks at Beca as Beca tools her way through the computer’s menus to pull up the correct folder on the drive. A whole playlist unspools in front of her, filing into place on Chloe’s iTunes account. She looks through it one more time.

“Beca,” Chloe says, softly. Beca glances up at her, and tries to breathe in.

“So, I was, um,” Beca says. She shakes her head. “I had a meeting today. And I was trying to – well, I started thinking about this summer. And about – that night we listened to Chvrches, and the night we listened to the remix I love.”

Chloe doesn’t answer again. She just watches Beca, and Beca stares back for probably half a second too long.

“Anyway, I’m a firm believer in mixtapes,” Beca says. “As you probably could guess. So I made you one.”

She presses play, and the sound of one of her remixes of “Parade” starts bursting out of the surround sound system set up through Chloe’s house. She knew it would do that, but Beca jumps anyway, because this is a real decision she’s made now. Chloe nods along to it immediately, and Beca is reminded of the amazing way Chloe feels music. How much it had interested Beca.

She’s beautiful.

“I love you,” Beca says. “That’s the point of the mixtape. Not to be a spoiler.”

Chloe stares at her some more.

“I love you, like, a lot,” Beca says, reaching up to rub at her forehead. “And I was stupid to break up with you and freak out so much about being together. I want you way more than I hate paparazzi. And I wanted to tell you, not on the Internet or in a song on the radio, you know? So. Here’s this.”

Chloe is kissing her by the time the enormous sounds of the chorus start playing.

-

“Okay,” Beca says, rolling her shoulders and jamming the mid-range mixers upwards. In the booth, Chloe is doing some weird vocal warm-up noises. “Chlo? You ready?”

“Always, babe,” Chloe says, winking at Beca through the heavy glass of the recording studio. She’s got her hands on her headphones, staring down at the hasty lyrics they had just scrawled together a few days ago.

“From the top,” Beca says, then presses play. Chloe begins to sing, and Beca listens.

-

Hear the new track from @djbmitch here! It features her BFF @chloebeale!  
- **Buzzfeed Music** (@buzzfeedmusic)

@buzzfeedmusic *GF  
- **Beca Mitchell** (@djbmitch)

@djbmitch @buzzfeedmusic 911 i just witnessed a murder  
- **me too** (@oogaooga18)

@oogaooga18 @djbmitch @buzzfeedmusic YEAH MINE  
- **B E C H L O E C O N F I R M E D** (@becachloebeca0)

-

THE END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! As you might be able to tell, I have a pretty extensive playlist for this fic - if you want it, let me know and I will put together some sort of list or playlist or something. Hopefully you liked this. If you did, let me know with a comment or a kudo or a flailing gesture.


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